From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Aaron Ecay Subject: Re: General advice beyond Org Date: Fri, 18 May 2018 15:21:59 +0100 Message-ID: <87fu2p59iw.fsf@gmail.com> References: <7dc580d0ea76c21328dc586ffadb5499@openmail.cc> <441378060.337754.1526627562985@webmail.appsuite.proximus.be> <3c1619129a29ec2327609496f73fb57a@openmail.cc> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:46355) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fJgGk-000657-AL for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Fri, 18 May 2018 10:22:16 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fJgGh-0007Qs-4M for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Fri, 18 May 2018 10:22:06 -0400 Received: from mail-wr0-x231.google.com ([2a00:1450:400c:c0c::231]:44394) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fJgGg-0007PO-Rc for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Fri, 18 May 2018 10:22:03 -0400 Received: by mail-wr0-x231.google.com with SMTP id y15-v6so9387916wrg.11 for ; Fri, 18 May 2018 07:22:02 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <3c1619129a29ec2327609496f73fb57a@openmail.cc> List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Emacs-orgmode" To: edgar@openmail.cc, Org-mode Hi Edgar, 2018ko maiatzak 18an, -ek idatzi zuen: > It is only when we have to collaborate directly that the issue > arises.=20 It sounds like the issue you are having is about collaboration workflow, and not about the usage of free software per se. Reading between the lines, it sounds like your biggest difficulty is with Microsoft Word. It=CA=BCs very unlikely that you will be able to convince your advisor to switch to another program when writing with you. As Diego said, it is ultimately up to you whether you can live with this. But there are certainly compromises you could entertain that might make it easier. There are important benefits, to a field and to individual researchers, of open analyses. On the other hand, what maters about a scientific publication is principally the words themselves and where they are published =E2=80=93 not the workflow that was used to create them, which mo= stly passes into irrelevance once they become part of the scientific record. So you might find pragmatic benefits to focusing on free software analysis tools and programming languages, and on the importance of publicly releasing analysis materials (whether based on free software or not) at an appropriate stage of the research, rather than on document authorship workflow where your advisor seems to have a particularly entrenched position. Another suggestion to reach out to other graduate students, who have the surplus of time* and lack of pre-established workflow habits conducive to learning new techniques. This won=CA=BCt directly solve your issues with your advisor, but if you are contributing to the success of free software in other areas you might feel like your sacrifices with her are being balanced out. (*Having been a graduate student, I=CA=BCm only too aware of the falsity of the premise that grad students have ample free time in an absolute sense. But relative to other career stages, grad students are probably the best situated in that regard. It=CA=BCs also true that there are many things that grad students need to learn that could be learned either with free or nonfree software. The marginal time cost of replacing nonfree software in that learning with free software is likely to be small.) It=CA=BCs also true that free software has network effects. Once someone is using R or Python, they are introduced to things like Jupyter or knitr (which are literate programming systems) =E2=80=93 or even org mode. They = also get exposed to VCS (like git), free text editors (like emacs, or RStudio), and other tools that do not directly replace Word but contribute to an alternate ecosystem. They might eventually be induced to switch their writing software of choice because of the features of such environments. So by evangelizing the pieces of free software that are most appetizing to others in your field, you are laying the groundwork for subsequent improvements that might initially be a harder sell. Finally, a very pragmatic suggestion. You might suggest to your advisor that you and her collaborate via Google Docs rather than MS Word. This is something I have found helpful with colleagues of mine who are not otherwise prepared to change their writing habits. The Google Docs interface is very similar to Word (but actually avoids some of the radical UI changes that MS has made recently, which might make it even more appetizing to certain users). While Gdocs is not free software (as it=CA=BCs important to point out), it enables me to use less proprietary software, on average. I=CA=BCve never been able to get Libreoffice to work satisfactorily for iterative edits to a Word doc; I find that it too often loses formatting, included images, or otherwise doesn=CA=BCt interoperate with Word well enough. So in the absence of Google Docs I would have to maintain a Windows system on which to use Word. With Gdocs I have one browser tab that runs unfree JS, but the rest of my system is GNU/Linux. (There are also benefits to the online-first nature of Google Docs, which avoids the emailing back and forth of dueling versions of a Word document that I have sometimes encountered in groups that primarily use Word =E2=80=93 but these are orthogonal to the free/nonfree distinction.) I hope that some of this comes as useful advice. --=20 Aaron Ecay