Over at Teekay’s

In a previous post, I concluded that MS Word really is the only option if you need to exchange docs with people out there — especially in the corporate world, where everyone’s surprised that there are alternatives at all. (I call this type collaborative writing even if the writing as such may not be collaborative. In fact, isn’t writing always a horribly lonely pursuit?)

In non-collaborative writing, fewer such restraints exist. (Of course, there may still be restraints with regards to the ultimate output, for example, journals that only accept certain formats etc.) That makes it easier to indulge my preference for Open Source software — a preference that is not simply based on ideological reasons but also on the fact that its code is publicly available and documented, which helps protect my files from sudden obsolescence.

In a non-collaborative environment, we can distinguish between tools that help you achieve beautiful output and tools that make the process of writing easier, for example by providing good thesauri or close integration with external bibliographers.

In other words, there’s usually a bit of a trade-off between output quality and ease of production.

For output-focused tools, there’s nothing like those that use the TeX engine for typesetting, that is, the entire LaTeX family (pronounced Lah-tech, with a “ch” as in the German “Achtung”). The final product is stunning — it has to be seen to be believed.

Don’t be put off because it uses a markup approach, where you produce plain text that’s then coded with arcane little commands. It’s actually very easy once you get the hang of it. And as always in the Open Source world, there’s a thousand people out there just waiting to help you out.

Problem is, once you use LaTeX, there’s no way you’re going back to Word or other WYSIWYG applications. Every single larger project — and a lot of smaller ones, too — that I’ve done in Word sooner or later ended with a big screw-up. And don’t tell me (as corporate IT departments usually do) that that’s because I’m on a bloody Mac.

I use iTeXMac, but the most popular LaTeX implementation for OS X is probably TeXShop. Both are good, though they do slightly different things and which one you’d use usually comes down to entirely personal preferences. Both work well with Bibdesk, an Open Source bibliography tool. And both produce amazing PDF files.

Whether working with them is a pleasure really depends on personal preference; LaTeX certainly takes a bit of getting used to, though nowhere as much as some would make you believe. You can be up and running within couple hours of going through some of the excellent online tutorials and manuals. (Be careful when installing the various components you’ll need; use i-Installer, which will walk you through the whole process.) For additional info, go here.

The next installment will be about production-focused tool in a non-collaborative environment. Stay tuned.