[Lincs] LaTeX

[Keith Marshall]

On Thursday 02 December 2004 1:58 pm, Ben Francis wrote:
> This is another "Ask LLUG" post.
>
> I've found myself writing a lot of documentation recently and at the
> moment I'm using Microsoft Word at work for the task (OpenOffice on Mac
> OS X is no fun).
>
> I've been looking into TeX/LaTeX. Can anyone recommend a free (as in
> beer AND speech) editor which will work in GNU/Linux, Mac and Windows?

Do you need an editor specifically for TeX/LaTeX?  My understanding is that 
any basic text editor is sufficient, but I may be wrong, since I've never 
used TeX/LaTeX myself--what about "vim" or "emacs"?

I too find myself writing quite a lot of documentation.  I use "gvim", 
"groff" and "ghostscript", to produce PDF--all work identically for me, on 
Linux and Win2K, (and probably also Mac, but I don't have one of those).  
IMHO, the typographic quality of the finished product far exceeds anything 
achievable with any of the WYSIWYHYMG word processing applications, and I am 
sure the same will be true for you, if you substitute TeX/LaTeX for "groff".

I fully agree that OpenOffice is a pain--on any platform; IMO the same is 
true of MS-Word, on any version of Windows.  Either is fine for dashing off a 
quick letter, but for serious typographic work, they just don't cut the 
mustard; (and even here, IMO "groff" is quicker--I find the GUI word 
processors to be slow and klunky, and their so called "smart formatting" 
features are an irritating and counter-productive nuisance).

HTH.

--

Keith.