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On Wednesday 12 November 2008 21:16, Paul Sutton wrote: > Tom Potts wrote: > > On Wednesday 12 November 2008 18:02, Benjamin M. A'Lee wrote: > >> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 05:54:19PM +0000, Tom Potts wrote: > >>> On Wednesday 12 November 2008 12:03, Aaron Trevena wrote: > >>>> 2008/11/11 Paul Sutton <zleap@xxxxxxxxx>: > >>>>>> Thought this would be of interest > >>>>>> > >>>>>> http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/11/11/university-ch > >>>>>> alle nged-ditch > >>>>>> > >>>>>> I am an OU student, so it will be interesting to see what happens. > >>>>> > >>>>> Oops, sent to wrong place, anyway, yeah interesting development, > >>>>> they already give out star office, but assignments need to be sent in > >>>>> .doc format, > >>>> > >>>> Requiring that assignments are sent in .doc is nuts - unlike printed > >>>> coursework, word/ooo/staroffice files can look completely different in > >>>> different versions, and you can end up with a 20 page document that > >>>> looks great on your computer looking a complete dogs dinner on the > >>>> computer of whoever is supposed to read and mark it, the only > >>>> reasonable format to accept would be PDF or postscript - and you can > >>>> get free plugins on every platform for every word processor to do > >>>> that. > >>> > >>> HTML is even better as it doesn't force you into 'paper' choices, > >>> allows you to focus on the information in the document and not the > >>> document itself. The amount of formatting in a document is inversely > >>> proportional to the value of its content. > >> > >> Then why not just use plain text? > > > > Images ? > > Tom te tom te tom > > With plain text there are issues with doing chemical formula, such as > CH4 where the 4 needs to be sub script, and even with word processing > packages that is a pain, if you want to show both atomic number and > atomic mass correctly then LaTeX works really well, as those two values > are on top of each other, next to the letter representing the atom, > The uni are specific in how they want things presented, (if you are > going to type formula they expect it done properly), short of hand > writing formulas in to documents, i am not sure if plain text is the > answer, however LaTeX would classify as plain text, as it simply needs > compiling in to say PDF, I am sure with tools such as text2tags then > this is possible to go from LaTeX to html, not sure how things would > look though; > > I agree with tom here, so either should be acceptable format, LaTeX, > or HTML depending on the situation. LaTeX can also handle images and > drawing of chemical structures, chemtool should export as LaTeX but it > failed when I last tried it, now I have some time between courses I can > perhaps look in to this more as to why it failed. There are some tools to convert LaTex to SVG which almost counts as HTML. Its a long time since I got into rubberwear but from what I remember SVG would be good for LaTex type stuff - and a LOT of other things too. Chemical structures in SVG - piece of cake. Visualisation of chemical reactions in SVG - not much harder! While MS might well be ridiculed for lack of understanding of the internet they knew that messing up the browser domain would help them enormously and now the world is buried under a mass of WOD's. > > Word processing is not always the best tool, and is not always used, > LaTeX is very popular in the science community, and i think could be > promoted more or at least be seen as an acceptable format. http://svgkit.sourceforge.net/tests/latex_tests.html looks interesting - even if the server aint werkingproper at the mo. Tom te tom te tom -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html