Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[ken]

Michael,

"Common opinion" has been about three or four people.  I just did a
quick search of the web for "master's thesis" and got nearly twenty-six
thousand (26,000) hits.  Granted, not all were actually master's theses,
but well more than half of the first several pages were, and at least
one of those came from a Harvard grad student.  I'd imagine that there
are many more which wouldn't turn up from such a simple search.  

I didn't hear anyone say that it's impossible to use html to format a
master's thesis-- it's obviously not--, only that LaTeX is more
convenient and perhaps more powerful (for them).  Heck, if there was a
way to underline with it, a silly little ASCII editor would serve just
fine.  I'm sure there's still people writing these things using a manual
typewriter.  The question, then, was and remains one of appropriate
technology and what the situation calls for.  It's not always the case
that the biggest hammer is the best.  Nor is there an ineluctably
Boolean path to every conclusion.  It's much more of a judgment call.

My original concern was to offer Elaine an alternative to LaTeX along
with general guidelines and had no intention of making this list into a
replay of "The Shoot-Out at the OK Corral".  Let's just leave it (the
Final Judgment on one of the several general guidelines I first
espoused) at this:

One guy says you could probably get enough from html to format a
master's thesis.  Three or four other guys disagree, say you absolutely
must use LaTeX, and that the first guy is non compis mentis.


Cheers,
ken

-- 
AMD crashes?  See http://cleveland.lug.net/~ken/amd-problem/.

Michael Slass at 21:31 (UTC-0000) on Sun, 24 Nov 2002 said:

= ken <ken@cleveland.lug.net> writes:
= 
= >Kai,
= >
= >Thanks for the introduction.  :)  
= >
= >Years ago I gave LaTeX a fair try-- much more than a half hour-- and
= >came away from it quite unsatisfied.  To my way of thinking, html is
= >more intuitive and much easier to write in as well as to read.  
= >Moreover, html is the lingua franca of the web and docs so formatted
= >drop into it without modification and without need for a plug-in;
= >correct me if I'm mistaken, but LaTex docs don't.
= >
= >Of course LaTeX has its place.  If I were involved in high-end 
= >typesetting, I'd definitely revisit it.  But its not the only tool 
= >available for formatting documents and not necessarily always the best 
= >for every job.
= >
= 
= No one is arguing either of these points; I believe most of the
= contention has been about what degree of complexity of a document
= warrants the transition from HTML to LaTeX.  IIRC, in your first post
= on this subject, you said that HTML was good for anything up to and
= including a master's thesis, and I suspect that common opinion is
= against you on this head.  I'm not sure where is a better spot to
= plant the arbitrary transition point, but I am sure that it's well
= south of the master's thesis.
= 
= All the best,
= 
=