What word processor do you use for technical papers?

Question

I've been looking for some time for a word processor to use for writing technical papers and I haven't really found one. What would really be nice to have is an editor that can handle mathematical expressions, code, and pseudo-code fairly well. I have yet to find one that works very well.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

Answer 1

I personally believe in LaTeX. Benefits:

• You can focus on content over form.
• Use logical rather than semantic formatting (e.g., \methodname vs. just italic).
• Easier to assemble large documents from multiple files.
• Use text-based version control (CVS/SVN/etc.)
• Widely used
• Much more stable even on super-weak machines
• Programmable. For example, I use macros to hide stuff, highlight stuff, obfuscate names by using a macro name with the real name but an obfuscated replacements.
• See all the tips and tricks available on SO.
• Output looks the same no matter which platform you compile on. Never had that luck with word, each version and each machine produces something slightly different.

Answer 2

I like LyX (http://www.lyx.org/) -- it's a good tradeoff between "spending all your time writing your document" and "spending all your time writing markup". The most recent versions are even useable!

Apart from that, Word 2008 is actually pretty darn good, provided you use the styles and other "advanced" features.

Answer 3

Depends on what you mean by "Word Processor". If you don't mind not having a WYSIWYG interface, I'd recommend LaTeX (http://www.latex-project.org/).

I wrote my final year Master's dissertation using it, which contained a lot of pseudocode, formulas, etc. Also outputs in a format fairly typical of technical papers.

Answer 4

Word with MS Equation for the mathematical sections.

Answer 5

LaTeX with TexMaker got me through grad school.

Answer 6

I use FrameMaker.

Answer 7

My answer's long, so I want to say up front: I think you want OpenOffice Writer (I use v2.4, haven't tried 3.0 yet).

I've used Word with equation editor and LaTeX heavily in the past and OpenOffice Writer more recently. I used the former two while writing my thesis.

LaTeX may still have advantages in quality of the output and in the ability to use text-based version control, but they're sharply diminished by OO Writer at this point.

Microsoft with equation editor, even the most recent versions, seems very weak still.

What I like about OpenOffice is that you can use the equation formatting mechanisms in a mode where the window is split between the document you're writing and another area where you can type very LaTeX-like formatting instructions. One of the big strengths of LaTeX is that you get to type up something like $x \in S$ for "x is an element of S". OO Writer lets you do this and see the result.

Back when I wrote my thesis, LaTeX was preferable to Word with Eqn. Editor because of the length of my document (over 200 pages), the quality of the results, and the ease of specifying equations. LaTeX does have a disadvantage in simplicity of use that is made more acute by OO Writer.

That said, I'm sure I'd use OO Writer for conference to journal length articles (~8-15 pages v. ~15-40 pages) and also for shorter work. For thesis-length work, I'm not sure which I'd end up using: Word never worked so well for me on longer matter; I suspect OO Writer is better behaved but I don't have enough experience of it to make a firm judgement.

Answer 8

I fully agree that L^AT_EX is a good choice. I've used for paper in univ, including my master thesis. For L^AT_EX I've been using Kile.

But nowadays there is interesting alternative which is DocBook with MathML extension.

Answer 9

MS Word with Mathtype. It has a number of advantages over the default Equation editor, including, but not limited to:

• keyboard shortcuts
• writing equations in tex mode then converting them
• converting equations from "normal" to "linear" mode (the one you can use in your programs, you know a=b/c and such)
• templates
• no more latex. I can concentrate on the material, not the writing

Answer 10

I like DocBook and use FOP to create PDFs from it.

Answer 11

I use reStructuredText because it can be used in Trac, converted to PDF and HTML, have little markup overhead, and looks nice in its plain form too.

Answer 12

Microsoft Word is considered as the market standard word editor.

Cheers, Eddie Gear