Re: Free Octave book in spanish (Part II)

[Guillem Borrell Nogueras]

Hi all!

Madhusudan.  You are absolutely right but let me emphasize my reasons:

-  I just wanted the document to be the most widely spreaded possible while 
keeping it editable.  Pdf is not editable and not everyone is confident with 
LaTeX.  It's been a pragmatic choice since I use LaTeX+emacs+AucTeX+preview 
LaTeX even to write my shopping list.

-  Writing about a programming language or a tool is _not_ editing a 
mathematical text.  There is not too much math in it. WYSIWYG can do the job.  
You should try OOmath2; very nice typing system and very nice output.  I 
considered equation editors useless till I found it.

-  I konw and use TeXmacs.  I am a proud emacs fan and I use it to mix LaTeX, 
octave and maxima.  It's a great tool but it can't handle such a large file.

guillem

On Saturday 28 January 2006 17:03, Madhusudan Singh wrote:
> > I translated the file to ODT because XML is the best format in the
> > effort/result ratio.  ANYONE can edit an Open Office document and it has
> > a
>
> That statement is strictly true only for a person who is not very
> proficient with LaTeX. I remember that for my thesis presentation, I had to
> use PDFLaTeX + beamer because it involved the least effort, and I got a
> layout which would have been extremely hard and time consuming to achieve
> with Impress (and time is something that you do not have at the end of grad
> school). It looked so professional, regular,  and yet not tastelessly
> flashy that I was hooked to that combination.
>
> Not to knock OpenOffice or any other WYSIWYG method of producing documents,
> but when you are dealing with mathematical o/p and a large number of
> similarly formatted pages with illustrations, there is really nothing with
> a vanishingly small effort and high return like LaTeX.
>
> Even now when I have to present results of my experiments, creating a
> beamer latex document takes me a fraction of the time it would take with
> any WYSIWYG method.
>
> And do not forget that there are a lot of users of Microsoft's products who
> may not be able to work the OpenDocument seamlessly thanks to that
> company's shameless attempt at trying to keep its market share through
> standards non-compliance. Yes, they can always download and install
> OpenOffice, but that involves extra effort.
>
> OTOH, LaTeX distributions exist for all operating systems and produce
> identical o/p everywhere. There are no conversion hassles involved because
> you are dealing with a plain text file that defines its own format (as does
> XML, but you are more dependent on a specialized program, as against a
> simple text editor like emacs / vi / notepad,  to edit it).
>
> > very nice output.  The pdf conversion is amazing, it can handle pdf 1.4
> > perfectly.  I'm impressed with the formula editor.  It has a latex-like
> > syntax and it's really fast.
>
> As can pdflatex. And formula editor is painful to use compared to just
> typing in the equation. All that time and effort wasted in clicks and
> selects. When I started in grad school, I knew some LaTeX but also used
> Word. I found through painful experience that entering equations in Word
> often doubled or tripled the time and effort I had to invest in writing up
> a document or a paper. There is a reason why LaTeX is standard in
> disciplines that use a decent amount of mathematical text - its the most
> productive and easiest (on the clock, and on your wrists) way of typing in
> those documents.
>
> The Formula Editor is perhaps the single biggest reason to move from
> WYSIWYG to LaTeX.
>
> > >Not only do I not know ODT, but I just realised that it's an OO.o v2
> > >format. You're making me download stuff from the unstable Debian
> > >distribution. :)
> >
> > OpenOffice 2 is in testing now and so is Octave.  We're on Debian testing
> > at the laboratory and everything goes flawless.  (Read the comment and
> > forget it: we're making the move to Ubuntu and Kubuntu because we're
> > tired of the Holy Trinity; Debian is stable, testing and unstable at the
> > same time)
>
> No. Debian is not in stable / testing / unstable at the same time. They
> have three different offerings for people who want stability, who want some
> stability with some cutting edge stuff, and those who just want the cutting
> edge stuff. IMO, its the most logically structured of all Linux distros.
> Ubuntu is a fine effort to create a unified distribution, but I think it
> tries to ignore the fact that newly released software just does not have
> the stability of an older version - it has to do with exposure to users,
> bug reports, fixing of bugs, just time. Software stability improves upon
> acquaintance with the user and time, and that is an immutable rule that
> single fork distribution vendors often ignore. The people at Debian showed
> great foresight in designing the structure of their releases the way they
> did.
>
> > >I don't know a word of LaTeX, but I use TeXmacs
> > > (http://www.texmacs.org), nice looking documents (LaTeX quality),
> > > easier to learn and you can use it as interface for Octave  (!) or
> > > Gnuplot.
> >
> > The latex document is too long and complicated to be handled by texmacs.
> > At the beginning it was a LyX file till I realized that the document was
> > full of LaTeX hacks. Now you must edit it in plain LaTeX
> >
> > guillem
>
> TeXmacs is more than just a method of typesetting text, you can also embed
> entire Mathematica / Matlab , etc. sessions inside it. It is a very fine
> product. However for purely generating documents, and guarranteed
> consistency with journal styles, WYSIWYG methods just do not match LaTeX in
> speed and power (I have used both).
>
> As your own experience with LyX showed you, these attempts at finding a
> middle ground between WYSIWYG and WYSIWYW often create more trouble than
> they are worth.
>
> MS
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.
>
> Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
> How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
> Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
> -------------------------------------------------------------

-- 

Guillem Borrell Nogueras
WEBSITE
   http://torroja.dmt.upm.es:9673/Guillem_Site/
BLOG
   http://torroja.dmt.upm.es:9673/Guillem_Borrell/
EMAIL
   guillemborrell_at_gmail.com (personal)
   guillem_at_torroja.dmt.upm.es (CFD Lab. ETSIA)



-------------------------------------------------------------
Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
-------------------------------------------------------------