Ask HN: MS Word alternatives for writing academic reports

#1

Post by indralukmana » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:38 PM UTC

Right now i am searching for an alternative for writing academic reports (master thesis). in the past i have written such reports (bachelor final projects) with MS Word and it is NOT an enjoyable experience. Whereas latex is widely used for academic reports, i don't really want to learn something so complex only for academic reports, i want to learn something that also can be used for general usage (documentation, blog writing, etc).

Here i found out about restructuredtext and markdown as a markup language for documentation. After some reading i concluded that restructuredtext is more in tune with what i am trying to accomplish e.g: it can be converted into latex if i want to incorporate bibliography from latex

What are your experiences on using markup language for writing general or academic documents(using figures, tables, bibliography, etc)? do you have suggestions regarding this topic?

PS: I mainly using linux

amd Here are some applications for writing markup language that i found:

https://notex.ch/ (rst, markup, latex) -- it seems to be made with GWT

http://rst.ninjs.org/ (rst)

https://github.com/github/markup (many)

http://sourceforge.net/projects/retext/

edit:

i agree with the expression "when you have a hammer, you see every problem as a nail" as stated by commenters.

but right now i am not proficient enough with a tool to switch or compare with another one.

some commenter suggest that i really invest in learning latex. i was starting to learn latex from wikipedia wikibook when i got intimidated by it and went to searching for alternatives.

based on the commenters some ways/applications to ease this learning are:

1. lyx

2. www.writelatex.com

3. using latex templates

4. scrivener

any other suggestions?

Re: Ask HN: MS Word alternatives for writing academic reports

#2

Post by wglb » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:43 PM UTC

I recommend latex, as once you get going it is not really all that complex, what with all the packages available.

Re: Ask HN: MS Word alternatives for writing academic reports

#3

Post by pseingatl » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:48 PM UTC

1. Draft in Scrivener. 2. Export to rtf. 3. Open the file in Open Office. 4. Export to LaTex. 5. Typeset pdf.

You can also export directly from Scrivener to LaTex, but a thesis is going to require a good deal of back and forth and revisions before it is ready for typesetting.

If you don't want to have a typeset final product, you can write in Scrivener and export to many different formats. If you want to write using Markdown syntax, you can do so in Scrivener as well. It's a terrific program.

Re: Ask HN: MS Word alternatives for writing academic reports

#4

Post by indralukmana » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:48 PM UTC

wglb wrote: post #2

I recommend latex, as once you get going it is not really all that complex, what with all the packages available.

i am considering learning latex, but it looks like it has a steep learning curve compared with markup language like rst or markdown and also it seems very verbose i.e, presentation and content are written whole/completely

Re: Ask HN: MS Word alternatives for writing academic reports

#5

Post by indralukmana » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:52 PM UTC

pseingatl wrote: post #3

1. Draft in Scrivener. 2. Export to rtf. 3. Open the file in Open Office. 4. Export to LaTex. 5. Typeset pdf. You can also export directly from Scrivener to LaTex, but a thesis is going to require a good deal of back and forth and revisions before it is ready for typesetting. If you don't want to have a typeset final product, you can write in Scrivener and export to many different formats. If you want to write using…

it looks like a very nice application, but i forgot to mention that i am now mainly using linux and it seems there is no linux version? (and also free (as in free lunch version) :D)

Re: Ask HN: MS Word alternatives for writing academic reports

#6

Post by pseingatl » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:59 PM UTC

indralukmana wrote: post #4

wglb wrote: post #2

I recommend latex, as once you get going it is not really all that complex, what with all the packages available.

i am considering learning latex, but it looks like it has a steep learning curve compared with markup language like rst or markdown and also it seems very verbose i.e, presentation and content are written whole/completely

LaTex is not a writing application, it is a typesetting application. LaTex should be your last stop before publication.

You can, of course, write natively in LaTex but the program wasn't designed for that.

Re: Ask HN: MS Word alternatives for writing academic reports

#7

Post by andrewcooke » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 3:06 PM UTC

i would probably try using pandoc's markdown http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#pandocs-markdow... and then generating latex from that. but that's because (imho) markdown is easy to edit / read. getting latex output any different from the default is going to involve "learning latex" i suspect.

pandoc is written in haskell and available on linux. for opensuse you can install it from http://software.opensuse.org/search

[i wrote my own thesis in latex, but that was many years ago. another advantage of starting in markdown is that it's easier to get to other formats, like putting your thesis on the web.]

Re: Ask HN: MS Word alternatives for writing academic reports

#8

Post by jimhefferon » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 3:08 PM UTC

pseingatl wrote: post #6

indralukmana wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i am considering learning latex, but it looks like it has a steep learning curve compared with markup language like rst or markdown and also it seems very verbose i.e, presentation and content are written whole/completely

LaTex is not a writing application, it is a typesetting application. LaTex should be your last stop before publication. You can, of course, write natively in LaTex but the program wasn't designed for that.

> You can, of course, write natively in LaTex but the program wasn't designed for that.

Hard to know precisely what you mean by this, but if you mean that you shouldn't be writing things like

    \documentclass{article}

    \begin{document}
    Hello world.
    \end{document}

then you are mistaken; the LaTeX book (and many other documents) describes what to do. If what you mean is that a person is somehow meant to use a front end such as LyX, then you'll get a lot of disagreement (such as from me).

Re: Ask HN: MS Word alternatives for writing academic reports

#9

Post by partoutok » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 3:10 PM UTC

We're beta-testing an online editor for technical documents, if you want to join we would be glad to have you (email/url in my profile). If you'd prefer a more DIY solution, in addition to LaTeX you should also check out asciidoc, it seems to support a lot of what you're after.

Re: Ask HN: MS Word alternatives for writing academic reports

#10

Post by GlennS » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 3:13 PM UTC

The first thing you need to know about is http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ which is a fantastic tool.

So I would say that it might be worth reconsidering LaTeX because it has http://www.bibtex.org/ which is excellent for academic papers. The investment to get competent with LaTeX is certainly several hours, but it pays itself back quickly. See http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX for a good learning resource.

For myself, I mainly use http://orgmode.org/ for emacs. This can export as LaTeX, and from there to any of the vast multitude of formats that LaTeX can be converted to. However, if you're not willing to learn LaTeX, then you're probably not willing to learn emacs either: where LaTeX is a matter of hours to learn competently, emacs takes weeks.

I used Markdown to write the bulk of my text for a while, but I found it didn't scale very well to large documents. It is great for blog posts and the like.