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Ask HN: MS Word alternatives for writing academic reports

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

#21

Post by lightcatcher »

agentultra wrote: post #16

Maybe https://www.writelatex.com/ can help you become familiar with LaTeX? I'm not huge into type-setting myself but there are numerous text editors and markup formats that can export to LaTeX. The bonus is that you can script most of the workflow and cargo-cult what you need to get the document working until you properly figure things out.

I used writelatex to learn LaTex and would recommend it. My first experience using LaTex was to write a research report that ended up being about 15-20 pages and included figures, references, etc. I originally just wrote the report in emacs (without typesetting the math, figures, or references), and then it only took me maybe an extra 90 minutes to typeset the whole thing in LaTeX (previously not knowing any LaTeX). Also, using bibtex for my references saved me a huge amount of time, so the net time difference between writing with LaTeX or familiar tools for me was less than 90 minutes.

Overall, I would recommend using LaTeX because its really not too difficult to pick up.

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

#22

Post by cmrivers »

I'm also an academic. I use Scrivener, then pop it into LaTeX. Scrivener has a non-commercial version for Linux. It's not fully featured, but it still does a good job. You have to download it from their forum: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=33&s...

Learning LaTeX is absolutely worth the time and effort. I realize it's not the easiest thing to learn, but it's invaluable for keeping track of citations, simple typesetting, and rendering equations. It is not, however, worth using for making slideshows or posters.

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

#23

Post by xorbyte »

Look if anyone in your institution has created a dissertation template for LaTeX, or if you can use one [from elsewhere](https://github.com/briandealwis/ubcdiss). I personally found the formatting to be the hardest part, not the actual writing, especially since you can find helpers for various text editors, like LaTeXTools for Sublime etc.

As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, don't make your hammer solve all of the problems.

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

#24

Post by lightcatcher »

jdleesmiller wrote: post #19
agentultra wrote: post #16

Maybe https://www.writelatex.com/ can help you become familiar with LaTeX? I'm not huge into type-setting myself but there are numerous text editors and markup formats that can export to LaTeX. The bonus is that you can script most of the workflow and cargo-cult what you need to get the document working until you properly figure things out.

I'm a cofounder at wL. If you're new to LaTeX, you might want to check out our online course [1], and we also have a 'rich text' mode that renders equations and some commands inline in the editor, for quicker feedback [2]. [1] https://www.writelatex.com/blog/7-free-online-introduction-t... [2] https://www.writelatex.com/blog/81

Sorry for being off topic, but I have a writeLaTex feature request/question.

There's only one thing about writeLaTex that convinced me to stop using the service (which I used while learning LaTeX) and to start doing all editing locally. This is the behavior when the connection is lost/dropped momentarily. The red bar appears at the top of the screen, but I'm still able to type, only to have my typing disappear a few seconds later and the cursor reset to the top of the input box. This is incredibly annoying even when it only happens once every 15 minutes. It seems like this could be fixed very easily (just store what I'm typing locally and then sync it to your servers).

Also, this isn't so much a complaint but a feature request: I'd be much less paranoid about writeLaTeX going down when I need to print/access a major report or something if there was a way to automatically save files locally. This could be done using the Dropbox or Google Drive APIs. For an example of these feature, you can try editing a file in Dropbox with https://draftin.com/ .

Thanks a ton, besides these warts I love the product!

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

#25

Post by jdleesmiller »

lightcatcher wrote: post #24
jdleesmiller wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a cofounder at wL. If you're new to LaTeX, you might want to check out our online course [1], and we also have a 'rich text' mode that renders equations and some commands inline in the editor, for quicker feedback [2]. [1] https://www.writelatex.com/blog/7-free-online-introduction-t... [2] https://www.writelatex.com/blog/81

Sorry for being off topic, but I have a writeLaTex feature request/question. There's only one thing about writeLaTex that convinced me to stop using the service (which I used while learning LaTeX) and to start doing all editing locally. This is the behavior when the connection is lost/dropped momentarily. The red bar appears at the top of the screen, but I'm still able to type, only to have my typing disappear a few…

Thanks for the feedback. That should now be better: we remember the cursor position for when the connection picks up again. If there's anything else we can help with, just let us know. :)

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

#27

Post by indralukmana »

jdleesmiller wrote: post #19
agentultra wrote: post #16

Maybe https://www.writelatex.com/ can help you become familiar with LaTeX? I'm not huge into type-setting myself but there are numerous text editors and markup formats that can export to LaTeX. The bonus is that you can script most of the workflow and cargo-cult what you need to get the document working until you properly figure things out.

I'm a cofounder at wL. If you're new to LaTeX, you might want to check out our online course [1], and we also have a 'rich text' mode that renders equations and some commands inline in the editor, for quicker feedback [2]. [1] https://www.writelatex.com/blog/7-free-online-introduction-t... [2] https://www.writelatex.com/blog/81

sounds like a very nice application, i see there are some pricing models (personal, pro, and teaching) which i think is excellent if i am using latex.

but is there a free (limited) plan for someone like me who still trying to learn latex.

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

#29

Post by jdleesmiller »

indralukmana wrote: post #27
jdleesmiller wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a cofounder at wL. If you're new to LaTeX, you might want to check out our online course [1], and we also have a 'rich text' mode that renders equations and some commands inline in the editor, for quicker feedback [2]. [1] https://www.writelatex.com/blog/7-free-online-introduction-t... [2] https://www.writelatex.com/blog/81

sounds like a very nice application, i see there are some pricing models (personal, pro, and teaching) which i think is excellent if i am using latex. but is there a free (limited) plan for someone like me who still trying to learn latex.

Yes, you can sign up for free (https://www.writelatex.com/signup), and there's a lot you can do with a free account.

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

#30

Post by wodenokoto »

Word with Zotero makes for a rather painless thesis writing experience.

Just remember to mark headlines as headings, and don't just change the font size of your headlines. It's easy to insert references to formulas, figures and graphs.

LibreOffice + Zotero makes for the some fairly painless bibliography, table of content, internal figure referencing.

If you need to build advanced graphs from large dataset, there is no painless way about it, but LaTex is in no way more difficult than the other options.

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