Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!violet!ftkcheng
From: ftkcheng@violet.uwaterloo.ca (Felix Cheng)
Subject: Re: Comparing word processors with TeX
Message-ID: <1991Feb28.192205.26512@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <18200@gremlin.nrtc.northrop.com> <614@taumet.com> <1991Feb24.014010.28426@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 1991 19:22:05 GMT
Lines: 96

In article <1991Feb24.014010.28426@watmath.waterloo.edu>, nmouawad@watmath.waterloo.edu (Naji Mouawad) writes:
> In article <614@taumet.com> mike@taumet.UUCP (Michael S. Ball) writes:
> >In article <18200@gremlin.nrtc.northrop.com> jslee@nrtc.nrtc.northrop.com (John Lee <jslee>) writes:
> >>
> >>Yes, I know it's not fair to word processors (like Word, WordPerfect,
> >>Macwrite, etc) to attempt to compare them to TeX, but when faced with
> >>the question:
> >>
> >>	Why should I have to tolerate the fickleness of TeX when
> >>	I can use Word or WordPerfect?
> >
> >The best reasons to use Tex are that it
> >
> >a) simplifies some part of the job which you are doing
> >
> >b) produces higher quality output, and you care about it.
> >
> >We have found the first to be true, particularly for longer documents
> >with significant structure.  The arguments for a markup language for long
> >documents are well known, and I won't repeat them.
> >
> >Using our Laserjet II printer, the output produced by Tex is significantly
> >higher in quality than that produced by WordPerfect with Bitstream fonts.
> >I don't know why that is, but it's quite noticable.  For anything with
> >equations WordPerfect isn't even close.  My friends who do desktop publishing
> >on Mac's and PC's regularly Oh and Ah over our Tex output, even though we
> >paid very little attention to anything but writing the document (an advantage
> >of a markup language.)
> >
> >On the other hand, we use WordPefect for letters, short reports, and similar
> >documents  which aren't worth the trouble of using Tex.
> >
> >A completely separate reason applies only if you consider documents to have
> >a high archival value in an electronic form.  When was the last time you
> >tried to recover some old wordstar files?   What? you don't still have
> >wordstar around?  How about MacWrite 10 years from now?  My TeX files
> >are still going to be there in ordinary ASCII, and I can edit out the
> >markup if I need to.  Of course, this is only a concern for major pieces
> >of documentation.
> >
> >-- 
> >Michael S. Ball			mike@taumet.com
> >TauMetric Corporation		(619)697-7607
> 
> While I do agree with Micheal concering the points that he raised
> in his posting, I thought I might share a little exprerience
> I had with WordPerfect and Latex:
> 
>  I had to write a long text (about 90 pages in 11 pt) with no
> subdivisions whatsoever. It was a continuous stream of text divided
> into paragraphs separated by blank lines.
> 
>  In case you do wonder why would anyone do something so stupid, this
> piece of text is a novel.
> 
>  Furthermore, this is a French piece. I have a French version of WP
> with a French keyboard (much easier to type in the French characters
> than in Latex, but again Latex was not designed with French
> characters in mind.) and after finishing those 90 pages, I decided
> to use "wp2latex" to get a latex version of the file, since I prefer
> Tex fonts over Wp fonts.
> 
> Once this tedious operation perfomed, I tried to Latex the file:
> 
> "Sorry out of main memory ..."
> 
> I thought this was because of DOS's memory limitations (I am using
> emTex BTW, excellent!). I transfered my files over my MIPS UNIX account
> and ran Latex on the file:
> 
> "Sorry out of main memory ..."
> 
> Either I am doing something wrong or Latex (maybe it is Tex) cannot
> swallow big unformatted chunks of text... unless you change
> the memory requierement, meaning that eventually you will get a bigger
> file that will give you back the dreaded:
> 
> "Sorry out of main memory ..."
> 
> As a Happy Ending, I went back to my DOS machine and ran blatex,
> which was able to process the file with no glitch. (Hurray for emtex !)
> 
> --Naji.
> -- 
>      -------------------------------------------------------------------
>     | Naji Mouawad  |          nmouawad@watmath.waterloo.edu            |
>     |  University   |---------------------------------------------------|
>     | Of Waterloo   |   "The Stranger in us is our most familiar Self"  |

Try using biglatex or bigtex.  These are LaTeX and TeX versions for
BIG files.  

--Felix Cheng