So Long and Thanks for the Fish -- Migrating from FrameMaker to Flare

[Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain@aeris.net)]

?  Isn't LaTex a non-WYSIWYG application, though? I can't imagine working that way in this century. I don't think I've done that since Wordstar. :)


?  Mike Wickham

Absolutely correct that it is non-WYSIWYG for the text input. So, it does require a change in thinking when writing.

However,


(a)    There are plenty of editors that allow the input text files to be simply previewed ... almost as you type, with full support for automated instruction entry, so that you can see the expected final output (which is PDF in my case) in a hurry. With today's fast computers, the regeneration of the PDF output on my system - even for multiple hundred page documents - takes less than 5 to 10 seconds, and usually far less.

a.      I am sure that there are more options, but what I have found to work very well is: TeXstudio available at http://texstudio.sourceforge.net/. This editor handles all the language issues of LaTeX cleanly and allows me to focus on the writing. With pdftolatex support built into TeXstudio, I can preview the PDF side-by-side to the input text, almost as fast as WYSIWYG editors!

(b)    Far too often, people - particularly novice writers and the engineers we like to pejorate (is there such a word? :)) - spend more time on paragraph and document formatting and less on the content. Using a text editor to create the content is actually a better approach.

a.      When I first started using FrameMaker, I would start by editing the text and then later add the formatting where I wanted. Later, when I had a set of documents already written, I could simply re-use one to get the correct look-and-feel.

b.      If anyone now provides me input for one of my documents - usually in Word - I simply save it as a text file, bring it into my LaTeX document as an include file, and then can quickly add the LaTeX instructions to make it have the correct headers, formatting and the like. Quick and easy!

So, for me, the advantages of LaTeX, particularly when used with an editor that handles adding the instructions (like TeXstudio), are very workable. I used to use LaTeX decades ago with more pain, but today's amazing community support (from the millions of users it has) and fast computers (to preview the output in almost real-time) has made it a simple re-adoption. As Mikey says, "Try it, you'll like it!". :)

Z

 It's nice to know there is a free alternative to FrameMaker, which has become very overpriced lately. They went from $400 for an upgrade every 2 or 3 versions to $400 to upgrade only one version.

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