[ILUG] LaTeX training

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Thu, 30 Nov 2006, Brendan Halpin wrote:

> Gavin McCullagh <gmccullagh at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > Sorry to be negative, but most people will go for low learning curve over
> > reliability and quality every time,
> 
> Most of what you say is true, but you're missing the essential.  Show
> them LaTeX and *most* of them will stick with Word. Don't show them LaTeX
> and they'll think Word is all there is. 

I suppose so, but would the college really be happy to fund training for a
large number of people when so few actually use it -- in an attempt to make
sure people know other options exist?  Would it be better to give
OpenOffice training which might be practical to use as well as free to
install at home?  Then give them one of the OpenOffice books and a cdrom as
part of the training.

> One big advantage of LaTeX is bibtex: automated bibliography. 

That's very true, bibtex is great.  It's also a big shot in the foot for
OpenOffice that it doesn't seem to (or didn't last time I checked) have a
decent way to manage references.  Perhaps this glaring ommission makes my
above suggestion pointless.  Unless something has changed recently?

http://bibliographic.openoffice.org/
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Bibliographic_Software_and_Standards_Information

> UL supports EndNote, which is good, but the site licence only goes as far
> as a discounted price for home use, which means it is no use.

I don't know how much it costs, but my guess is academics who work from
home would happily pay a reasonable fee for genuinely useful software, no?

Gavin