Didier Kryn <kryn@???> writes:
> Le 08/11/2015 16:51, Haines Brown a écrit :
>> On Mon, Nov 02, 2015 at 05:16:20PM +0100, Stefan Mark wrote:
>>> On 02.11.2015 16:50, Mitt Green wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I'm in search for an office pack. Considering Gnumeric as a decent spreadsheet
>>>> application (even better than LibreOffice's one?), I can't be sure about word
>>>> processor, speaking of numerous AbiWord issues.
>>>>
>>>> LibreOffice has too many dependencies, as well as AbiWord, while I'd like
>>>> to remain minimalistic.
>> I'm undoubtedly biased, but I have come to find plain LaTeX easier than
>> a word processor. My wife, a computer newbie, has a Mac laptop that came
>> with a word processor (Page, I think), and she was struggling with it. I
>> set her up with LaTeX, and life became easier for her, using a simple
>> template. Some people (but not I) might recommend LyX as a compromise.
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>

>     LaTeX  has been used for collaborative work by scientists for
> decades. OTOH, it takes some learning to work with it and it is not
> wysiwig at all.

Every complex tool takes "some learning work", IOW, there's a reason why
"PC skills" are considered "PC skills" and the reason is not that MS
Wuerg (German for 'choke') can read people's thoughts and act
accordingly. With LaTeX, it's at least possible to look stuff up in the
documentation and rest assured that it will remain in the same place as
opposed to hunting it down in an intricate, graphical 3D maze, to be
repeated with every release of the software.

And then, LaTeX markup has the nice property that it stays where one
puts it will 'invisible style information' of the kind so-called TYWESA
(this you won't ever see again) word processors has a tendency to escape
out of its intended confinement and then needs to be hunted down and
killed before it infects so much of the document that the only realistic
option is "start writing from scratch". If I have to write text, I
prefer writing text instead of fighting the tool supposed to help me
with that.