From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Peter Neilson" Subject: Re: Efficiency of Org v. LaTeX v. Word Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 04:06:03 -0500 Message-ID: References: <87sig1d8ee.fsf@pierrot.dokosmarshall.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:43905) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Y4nKA-0006d5-QT for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sat, 27 Dec 2014 04:06:15 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Y4nK5-0002mR-QN for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sat, 27 Dec 2014 04:06:14 -0500 Received: from pacmmta55.windstream.net ([162.39.147.221]:40316) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Y4nK5-0002kF-KA for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sat, 27 Dec 2014 04:06:09 -0500 In-Reply-To: <87sig1d8ee.fsf@pierrot.dokosmarshall.org> 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-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 23:27:37 -0500, Nick Dokos wrote: > Anyway, color me deeply suspicious of the "study". Indeed! The study touches only a few of the inherent difficulties in document production. Its major flaw is that it draws any conclusions at all recommending that authors produce documents one way or another. Personally I am always disappointed when someone requests a document in MS Word format, because that means I'll have to fire up Libre Office and shove my text through it, rather than using whatever other system I happen to have been using. I do not believe that I currently own a system with genuine MS Word. As well as having insufficient control of variables, and a flawed understanding of what is involved in "document preparation," the study also has a marginally small sample size. Any study for any purpose that presents "statistics" with sample sizes smaller than 30 is immediately suspect. I won't even begin to address the misinterpretation of correlation as causation that appears in the "softer" sciences, nor their necessity for sample sizes far larger than 100, nor the tendency in some fields to mistake a time series as a set of samples. MS Word works extremely well for "one-off" small papers. Little investment of effort is required for a naive person to produce adequate results, and as every user of emacs knows, that's pretty much the opposite of emacs. On the other hand, MS Word has historically been a terrible tool for producing large documents, or documents that are to be maintained by a group of people, or over several years or decades. Handling Word's "Master Document" provision without being crippled by corrupted documents is an art form unto itself. The standard advice among experienced users of Word has always been, "Don't Use Master Documents!" When a group of people are all editing versions of a document, any attempt to use standard formatting in Word requires substantial effort to prevent naive contributers from reformatting outside the established styles, or even breaking all the styles. Furthermore, Word documents are in general not amenable to incremental version control as commonly used by coding teams. My conclusions? If your paper is trivial and you are under pressure to produce it quickly, then MS Word might be the best tool. Established journals should attempt to allow contributions in more than one format, and restriction to MS Word format is a bad idea, no matter how much some people like the apparent ease-of-use that MS Word provides. Attempting to extend the "study" to include org mode would be a waste of effort.