On Thu, 10 May 2007 08:24:34 +0200 "Julio Rojas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What I'm really amazed of, is the quantity of technical and > engineering congresses that "ask" the authors to submit their papers > is Word format and don't have (and don't support) LaTeX styles. > > I'm doing some evangelism with my friends that are working on their > PhD's to switch to LyX/LaTeX. They instantly love the typesetting, the > styles and the formula typing. The problem is not only congresses > their making articles for, but their own tutors don't work and never > have worked with LaTeX. That by itself, stop them in their effort. If > at least LyX/LaTeX generated PDF's could be commented by default (or > using a switch), their switch would be smoother. I proof read and commented a friend's thesis that they wrote in latex and which was sent to me as pdf or ps. This used flpsed which places a comment into the a ps or pdf. Only one series of comments can be done. Later I was able to check to comments using psdiff. It all worked perfectly. There was a very tight time schedule and I was able to easily submit the proofs to the author who went to submit the final version on time. flpsed: http://www.ecademix.com/JohannesHofmann/flpsed.html psdiff: http://www.intermemory.org/pny/software/psdiff/main.html I used Linux and the flsped is available as a Ubuntu deb package. Annotating pdf? no excuses now! cheers Russell > > On 5/9/07, David L. Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Steve Litt wrote: > > > > > Big publishers like O'Reilly (or in the case of my Samba Unleashed, Sams) > > > take > > > complete control of the book's layout. Working with a mainstream > > > publisher is > > > the ultimate WYSIWYM experience -- you as the author are responsible only > > > for > > > content. Your publisher gives you a list of styles you may (and must) use > > > and > > > a stylesheet telling how and when to use them. You do that, and the > > > publisher > > > takes care of the rest. > > > > > > If the publisher were to accept a LyX document (or LaTeX), they'd either > > > need > > > to accept the author's layout (bad idea when you publish a uniform series > > > like Unleashed or Nutshell), or they'd need to translate back into MS Word > > > with appropriate styles. > > > > Not at all. Some publishers (granted, all I know about are math > > journals, which form a biased and tiny subset of publishers) simply > > require you to use their specific TeX style files --- which is easy to > > do in TeX, and not so bad in LyX either, in fact, some of the Springer > > styles (kluwer) are already included in LyX. No reason to translate > > into Word. Also, going from one TeX style to another is far easier than > > trying to do the same thing in Word. > > > > > > Another reason they use MS Word is because MS Word has facilities to track > > > changes, so the chapter documents that keep getting sent back and forth > > > contain a complete history of queries, reponses and changes. > > > > This is also easy to do in LyX/TeX, but it is also dangerous to keep > > such information in a document by default. It can be very embarrassing, > > say, in a job offer letter, to be able to see what the original salary > > offer was, before upper management cut it by 25%. This may be less of a > > problem in this case, but still unwanted information can be transmitted. > > > > > > Of course, one could ask "why not make LyX the official "wordprocessor" > > > instead of MS Word, and supply a LyX layout instead of a MS Word style > > > template. The answer is simply that it's very hard to find willing and > > > qualified authors for the amount mainstream publishers are willing to pay, > > > and it would be far easier to get the few LyX/LaTeX users to switch to MS > > > Word than to get the multitudes of MS Word users to switch to LyX, which > > > many > > > haven't heard of, don't have, and don't know how to install. > > > > This should be less of a concern for the likes of O'Reilly, who really > > do support open source, the antithesis of MS practice. > > > > -- > > > > David L. Johnson > > > > Let's be straight here. If we find something we can't understand > > we like to call it something you can't understand, > > or indeed even pronounce. -- Douglas Adams > > > > > -- > ------------------------------------------------- > Julio Rojas > [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Please, if possible, don't send me MS Word or Powerpoint attachments. Send plain text, rich text format, html, or pdf instead. Why? See: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sylvester-response.html
