Want To Wirte Essays And Thesis Easily? - Latex, Texmacs... looking for a new opt!

Well, i may sound ignorant by admiting this...

I have never heard of a software like latex or texmacs, until yesterday!!!!!!

For those who haven't heard it before either... this is my first aproach to it...

My brother in law is working on his thesis to get his physic diploma at the university, and i was amazed by the format of the resulting docuemnt.. so he explained to me that he was using this sofware.... It arranges all the contets for you, it makes the table of contents, it helps with the footnotes, with the pages, with the titles, the standard metric of the docuemnt, it even put the sub sections!!!!!!!!!!


On the upper part of the page it display ; on teh left page the sub chapter and on the right the chapter...

In resume... IT GREAT!!!!

And it has different layouts depending on the kind of docuemnt your doing.....


The thing is... latex is like a programming language.... and i rather have a visual interface... so texmacs has one! (it0s based on latex), but it's for linux and i use windows


So, i looking for a Win Xp friendly software that does all of this!!!!!

DO U KNOW ONE?

 

 

 

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Sounds alot like Microsoft Word to me. I have not played with either latex or texmacs that much to really comment on it with any authority. The most I know is that they are both open source text editors usually found in Linux.

As of all the features you mentioned, everyone of them is in MS Word. In my job I am constantly writting reports and I would be lost without all the features in Word. Alot of people slam Microsoft (me usually being one of them) but if you dig deep into Word you can have amazing control over your document.

I even considered taking one of those courses in how to use Word to it fullest. The ads that I have seen say you can type over 100 words per min with some of the special features in Word.

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Well, i know the features from word, but in word you have to do a lot of things to get your format going.. and with the macros you can "programm" your .doc... true

But Latex facilitaes the labor and has great feutures...

I tried to search for a comparisson list for you, i found http://acs.ucsd.edu/info/thesis.php but the ftp didn't open, so i'll keep sarching....

Word it's great, but has too many hiden services... this makes the task more diffciult!

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Well, LaTeX (you need to use the caps that way ) is NOTHING like word.
LaTeX is actually a type setting system, Word is a text processor. What the difference is?

Word depends on what fonts are installed, which OS you have etc. THe look of the document changes depending on the system on which it is displayed.

LaTeX is ALWAYS the same, on every OS. I can make a tex document and have it look identical on Linux and on Windows, there's no difference

LaTeX on windows is not as easy as it is on Linux, and the entire objective of LaTeX is that the writer only worries about the text and not tha looks, so a visual tool for it is not ok.

For starters you need the system, MikTeX does that, as editor I use NotePad ++ because it has syntax highlighting, you also need a DVi viewer and PDF viewer. I believe Yap, which is a DVI viewer, comes with MikTeX. Don't be mistaken it is a MASSIVE download, it's HUGE on Windows. The file you download first is tiny, but that's just the installer.

http://www.miktex.org/

 

 

 

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I downloaded small-miktex-2.4.1705.exe and it's 24.9 mb.. so it's not so small either...

I didn't isntall it beacuse i'm afraid it may be to difficult to learn it...

So i'm serahcing for new alternatives.....

So far, i have just found one...Th Wizard of Words
http://www.writersupercenter.com/wizard/

Thew thig is, what i want is some kind o "helkp" with the format and everything....

With visual interface and for windows... and no so comple to use

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Well you can always use Lyx. Lyx is a free open source editor (it sits on top of latex..so essentailly its a tool to do latex easily). Check it here. It has a native Win32 port (which i think would be a bit outdated ..but should be more than enough to do what you would be needing)..you could always get Cygwin and Cygwin-KDE to run Lyx on Windows XP(Cygwin is an emulation program ..and with Cygwin and KDE-Cygwin you would be able to run KDE/Linux programs like lyx on WinXP/2K).

Last but not least..just install linux if its easy for you and take advantage of all the native free softwares like lyx for free....

if you need further help..done hesitate to Private Messege me.

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