[CentOS] Latex - was Novell sale news?

Tue Nov 23 14:29:59 UTC 2010
Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com>

At Tue, 23 Nov 2010 13:02:35 +0000 (GMT) CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> On Mon, 22 Nov 2010, Robert Heller wrote:
> 
> > To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> > From: Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com>
> > Subject: Re: [CentOS] Novell sale news?
> > 
> > At Mon, 22 Nov 2010 15:10:41 -0500 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> >>> On Mon, 2010-11-22 at 14:42 -0500, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> >>>> Barry Brimer wrote:
> >>>>>> Just saw that today. I wonder if any of those assets is the superior
> >>>>> (and utterly badly marketed) WordPerfect.
> >>>>> I thought Novell sold WordPerfect to Corel a long time ago.
> >>>> Maybe - I've lost track. I'm still waiting for *anyone* to actually
> >>>> market the damn thing - I'd *buy* it (or rather, upgrade from 6.0.c for
> >>>> DOS)....
> >>>> I'll take it over Word *or* OO.o, any day.
> >>>
> >>> It is nearly antique at this point.
> >>>
> >> Why do you call it that? What features are missing (and I haven't looked
> >> at a current copy in 10 years, btw). In general, I don't see *anything* I
> >> couldn't have done with the one from back then.
> >>
> >>> Recent OOo has worked extremely well for me; editing complex 200+ page
> >>> documents with refereces, TOCs, & indexes.  I've really become a fan of
> >>> OOo starting in the 3.2.x series.
> >>>
> >> I guarantee WP 10-12 years ago could handle all that - most City of
> >> Chicago, and I think federal contracts, used to specify that documents be
> >> in WP format.
> >>
> >> Besides, the files were always *much* smaller, and you could always beat
> >> it into submission with <alt><F3>, I think it was, and the way it revealed
> >> formatting... I was amazed that they didn't market that straight for
> >> designing web pages. AND not a single word processor or web page building
> >> I've seen writes them clean: both Word and OO.o write out *crap*, with
> >> font size and font and color and every damn thing on every single line,
> >> rather than only when something changes.
> >
> > And I *still* use LaTeX.  *I* won't touch a "word processor" (I tried
> > OO *once* to create a mess-word version of my resume and it was a total
> > disaster).  I routinely create documents with something close to 1000 pages,
> > with refereces, TOCs, & indexes, etc. Way back when I've created
> > rather large documents with LaTeX *on a 10mhz 68000* with only 1Meg (yes
> > *one* meg) of RAM (this was an Atari 1040ST running OS-9/68000).  And a
> > 40 *meg* hard drive.  Talk about small footprint software.  With
> > pdflatex and tex4ht I can generate PDF directly and *clean* HTML.  And
> > both using Makefiles with automated tools.  And TeX/LaTeX is open
> > source.
> 
> Are you aware of lyx, a front end to Latex?

Yes.  Never used it.  I use a *plain text editor* to edit LaTeX source. 
Always have and always will.

> 
> I used it to create the Kickstart User Guide in PDF format.
> 
> LyX combines the power and flexibility of TeX/LaTeX with the 
> ease of use of a graphical interface. This results in 
> world-class support for creation of mathematical content 
> (via a fully integrated equation editor) and structured 
> documents like academic articles, theses, and books. In 
> addition, staples of scientific authoring such as reference 
> list and index creation come standard. But you can also use 
> LyX to create a letter or a novel or a theatre play or film 
> script. A broad array of ready, well-designed document 
> layouts are built in.
> 
> LyX is released under a Free Software/Open Source license, 
> runs on Linux/Unix, Windows, and Mac OS X, and is available 
> in several languages.
> 
> It's in the EPEL repo.
> 
> Name       : lyx
> Arch       : i386
> Version    : 1.6.6.1
> Release    : 1.el5
> Size       : 9.9 M
> Repo       : installed
> Summary    : WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) document processor
> URL        : http://www.lyx.org/
> License    : GPLv2+
> Description: LyX is a modern approach to writing documents
>             : which breaks with the
>             : obsolete "typewriter paradigm" of most other
>             : document preparation systems.
> 
> Keith
> 

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933 / heller at deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software        -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
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