Round-trip revisions via MS Word. Alternate methods?

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

At 09:57 -0800 3/3/14, Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain at aeris.net) wrote:
> > Agreed that LaTeX has a steep learning curve and, in this WYSIWYG world, it may seem
> > like a step backward to some people. However, the power and flexibility (with highly
> > consistent formatted output) is very appealing in some cases.

> > With regard to hyphenation, it sounds like the person writing the thesis was not providing
> > hyphenation hints. You can use the \hyphenation command to identify the break points
> > in a set of unusual words, and LaTeX will do the right thing after that whenever it sees those words.

Steve Rickaby wrote:
> It was just an example taken at random from recent experience. I'm sure there is a workaround,
> but the writer is a software expert and researcher, and the fact that he didn't know about this sort
> of proves my case - that getting good results out of LaTeX requires deep knowledge ;-) I am sure
> that it can be made to do great things, but I've never seen what I would consider acceptable results
> come out of it in the the hands of non-experts.

Oh, yes, understood and agreed!

It definitely does take much more effort to learn and use LaTeX. And the problem is that there are _often_ add-in packages that will fix any issue that is observed in output.

But researching and learning the availability (and nuances) of a particular package for a particular issue does take time. Time that is well-spent if LaTeX is the primary tool, but not as easy to justify for occasional work, yes.

Z