I restrained myself from posting yesterday! But the gauntlet has been
thrown.
I use LaTeX. The only time I have had to use Word is when I am part of
a writing team when the others only use Word, and those documents tend
to *not* be mathematical in nature. I dislike it.
I have also used PowerPoint and LaTeX for producing slides--I am
currently in my LaTeX phase. For the PowerPoint slides I have the
Design Science Mathtype and have not had the problems Clive reports--you
can choose the font, size, colour etc... Indeed, it is much easier to
manipulate the fonts in PowerPoint than in LaTeX--see what gyrations you
have to make to get bold Greek letters in math mode in LaTeX slides.
The Mathtype looks suspiciously close to LaTeX, and my guess is that the
engine that is driving Mathtype is probably something like LaTeX. Note
that it can spit out LaTeX code for you! And some people value the
WYSIWIG aspects of Mathtype and not have to go through the
edit-compile-view cycle to see what every change will finally look like.
Graphics are much easier to deal with in PowerPoint. I have a tablet
(IBM/Lenovo X41) and I use it for presentations and have the ability to
handwrite on the slides too as I make my presentation; a very
impressive capability which sits much more naturally with PowerPoint
than with the way I actually do it, via LaTeX and pdf. I recommend this
capability for anyone who teaches; it combines modern type
setting/graphics/film capabilities with the Socratic stick-in-the-sand
method of teaching. Much more immediate and much less slick.
What is true in general, although LaTeX was the earlier kid on the
block, the newer capabilities tend to come sooner with the commercial
software. If you are patient enough and willing to wait, what sometimes
to turns out to be a year or two, then fine. If you need occasional user
support (not the caliber of Stata and Statalist, of course!) then the
commercial software is a better choice. Indeed, it is difficult to make
general statements about LaTeX because it probably means something
different to everyone out there depending on how the package has been
implemented on their machine.
But all Suzy wanted was, "I am searching for inexpensive (or freeware)
statistical/mathematical fonts/symbols that can be used in a word
document." We all took "word" to mean "Word".
m.p.
Clive Nicholas wrote:
Alan Neustadtl wrote:
FWIW, I purchased the mathtype equation editor and keep it current and
have never had any problems with it. I do produce large documents
with lots of equations.
steep! But if I get the chance to revise my thesis, I won't be rewriting
it in MS Word, that's for sure! Now, before Marcello Pagano gets cross...
CLIVE NICHOLAS |t: 0(044)7903 397793
Politics |e: [email protected]
Newcastle University |http://www.ncl.ac.uk/geps
(Learning to use LaTeXEditor along with my MiKTeX pacakge.)
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
