Best word processor for typing up a theses

clearz

Hi

I know you are thinking 'What sort of question is this for the Physics / Chemistry forum' but I figured you guys might have had more expierence typing up papers than most people. I have just finnished my third year in college and have to say that one of the most stressful things I have had to endure for the last three years was using Microsoft Word. This stinking pile of horse manure of a word processor has got a mind of its own that defies all logic known to me (And im a CS student). Who would think that something designed to do such a simple task could make things so difficult. I mean have you ever tried using tabs, you would have better luck obtaining a straight line by drawing the letters on with the mouse. Anyway next year I will be doing a theses and there is no way on earth I will be using Microsoft Word. Has anyone any other alternatives that they think is better.

Regards
John.

qBot

U could try Open Office, it's recieved good reviews. Another option might be AbiWord. Both are free and open and all of that lark. Personally though, I like word even though it is very awkward when working with tables and the like.


Edit: Not that I have used these much but open programs tend to have a lot of cool plugins. There might be a plugin suited for whatever purpose you need the word processor for. ie Chemical formulas or whatever.

zAbbo

Have to agree with OpenOffice, used it for my thesis, its excellent for managing large documents and has a great Export to PDF feature

clearz

I like the idea that it exports to PDF. I have a mate who uses open office on the linux operating system. I wonder is it the same one.

qBot

Tis the same alright. It's one of the few decent word processors available for linux.

dudara

The only thing of any use for writing a scientific document is the Latex environment. You can use a text editor like WinEdt to write the document and then churn out a very presentable thesis.

Nothing else comes close for scientific writing.

Miktex is for windows systems but there are heaps others for other OS

dictatorcat

Originally posted by dudara
Miktex is for windows systems but there are heaps others for other OS

I'm using MikTex at the moment and it's great, it's exactly like regular LaTeX but for windows. It's main advantages are that it gives a pretty output, using the correct commands you can automatically create a table of contents and best of all it comes with bibtex which allows you to use the same reference in as many documents as you like without losing track of it, and you only ever have to type it once. Also it's piss easy to write equations.

If you're short on time i wouldn't reccomend it. It's the fastest thing out there but you have to be willing to learn the commands, a useful site is:

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/

Delphi91

If you use Linux (and as a CS student, you should be ) then you could use Kile. Its a front end for Latex and I find it brilliant. You can get more info on it here:

Kile

It will produce postscript and pdf output and can even be coaxed into giving html output also! It has a link to gnuplot so you can get it to plot data at the same time.

Mike

Civilian_Target

Wow. They all look like overkill to me! I use openoffice and find its formula editor to be excellent. It's seen me through many lab reports.

Delphi91

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
Wow. They all look like overkill to me! I use openoffice and find its formula editor to be excellent. It's seen me through many lab reports.

Well, I can't comment on OpenOffice for mathsy stuff as I tend to stick to LateX. But I remember writing my masters thesis and seeing others who had written theirs in MS Word and god it was awful!

If the thesis is going to be maths based, then Latex is the answer without question. Its a typesetting language, so its designed from the get-go for publishing.

If you have a fear of the typesetting commands involved and prefer wysiwyg, then "Scientific Word" is a Windows program which implements latex but wihtout the necessity of using the latex code. Only problem is, it costs!

Mike