Re: Antw: pdf-export
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg44294] Re: Antw: pdf-export
- From: Joe Gwinn <joegwinn at comcast.net>
- Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 03:24:30 -0500 (EST)
- References: <BBC5445D.62E8%J.A.Solomon@city.ac.uk>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Paul, At 3:41 PM +0800 11/3/03, Paul Abbott wrote: >On 29/10/03, Joshua A. Solomon wrote: > >>On 28/10/03 10:59 am, in article bnli5n$p86$1 at smc.vnet.net, "Paul Abbott" >><paul at physics.uwa.edu.au> wrote: >> >> > In article <bndjc8$g0q$1 at smc.vnet.net>, >>> "Joshua A. Solomon" <J.A.Solomon at city.ac.uk> wrote: >>> >>>> I don't know about 10.3 (out ... >>...snip... >>>... MS Word document. >>> >>> But why would you want do that? :-) Word is such a crappy word >>> processor for scientific documents. >> >>Maybe so, but virtually everyone has a copy. That comes in handy for >>collaborations. > >On 29/10/03, Joe Gwinn wrote: > >>Because not all plots from Mathematica are destined for scientific >>documents. I don't like Word either, but must live with it. >> >>So, someone please answer the question. > >Well, it's not WYSIWYG but the following works for me. Select the graphic in Mathematica and use > > Edit | Save Selection As... | EPS > >to save as EPS. Then import the graphic into Word. > >Personally, I still find the arguments about using Word unconvincing. All my collaborators have access to Mathematica, which is a _much_ better tool for collaboration than Word (but most use TeX not Word or Mathematica for their documents). Also, I use Mathematica Notebooks for non scientific documents too. I try hard to avoid Word and will use Acrobat or a web format instead. I agree that in the academic community one can likely avoid Word. However, in the business and engineering worlds, Word is ubiquitous and unavoidable. In many cases, the formal documents I prepare for the customer are required by contract to be in Word. Very few of my collaborators in the engineeering world have even heard of Mathematica, never mind have a copy. Trying to convince my collaborators to abandon Word is hopeless; they would just roll their eyes. And I can just imagine the wailing if they tried to learn Mathematica. Despite the marketing bafflegab from Wolfram, Mathematica is not "easy to learn", it's a full-rank programming language, so people need to have real motivation to undertake such an effort. (I learned it long enough ago to have forgotten the pain.) I do publish in pdf as well, but often it has to be from Word, and the report templates are often provided only in Word. As much as I hate Word, I have to live with it, and have gotten good at coercing it into line. It's a black art. By fair means or foul, MS has won the desktop, and has something like 95% of the market. (Actually, we now know that it was foul means, but the DoJ doesn't seem likely to do anything effective about it.) I'm an old Mac hand (this is typed on a Mac), but they are currently about 3% of the market. Bottom line is that we must live with MS and its products. Actually, Adobe Framemaker is what I would prefer to use in lieu of Word, but that's another story, and Framemaker is neither common nor easy. Joe Gwinn