latex word-text processor: what you know about it

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francois
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latex word-text processor: what you know about it

Post#1 by francois » 21 Jul 2017, 13:30

Latex is available thru usm under texlive, lyx would be a gui interface, but from some user perspective not really needed, pdflatex would be a useful companion to texlive:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... 175491053/

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root@porteus:~# usm -g texlive
root@porteus:~# usm -g lyx
I would like to replace libreoffice with another text editor. Latex could be a possibility. What do you know about it?

@tonio:
What is your word about it?
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Re: latex word-text processor: what you know about it

Post#2 by Tonio » 21 Jul 2017, 16:25

Latex is a document preparation system. It is not a word processor. For a word processing feel, theres LyX. It is a WYSIWYM(what you see is what you mean). Reports, books, letters, posters, there are many you can do with LaTEX. I really like LaTeX and plain TeX, but to use this insted of Libreoffice or abiword, that would make it tougher for new users. It (TeXLive) is huge compared to Libreoffice. Also users(except the ones that do appreciate LaTeX) do not want it on a small distro like porteus.
Pdflatex is the default output now vs previous DVI files. The output is in pdf format. For instance, the smaller TeX distribution I use is KerTEX. It is smaller, but there is no pdflatex. Files have to be converted to postscript then use ps2pdf for pdf conversion.
Take a poll, get more input, I really like TeX but use it to replace office wordprocessor like abiword, or libreoffice writer, it makes no sense to me. Even if tex output is superior, the new users, would not like it. Even if LyX is included, this is not recommended.
What do other user's recommend?

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Re: latex word-text processor: what you know about it

Post#3 by francois » 21 Jul 2017, 22:10

You would say the same about kertex?
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Re: latex word-text processor: what you know about it

Post#4 by Tonio » 22 Jul 2017, 00:29

francois wrote:You would say the same about kertex?
Actually, no. KerTeX is smaller and one can typeset many beautiful documents.; but TeXLive has more support. These TeX systems are great and can produce great documents. However, they are not designed/created to replace a word processor. I use both systems on my machines, because sometimes the documents need many important files not present in the other system. If a user wants to learn about TeX and/or LaTeX and create beautiful documents (with mathematics); there is no rival other than learning to use them. If there was an interest, people would ask me for a kerTeX module for new porteus. If I could not make it for any reason, I would help in the building scripts. I created a LyX module as a proof of concept, but it did not work well as if using TeTeX or TeXLive so I did not pursue the work much farther.
I would recommend keeping/using Libreoffice or abiword+gnumeric for newbies, unless they are willing to invest some time in learning TeX or LaTeX.
Cheers!

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