Re: RTF for emacs

[James Freer <jessejazza3.uk@gmail.com>]

On Sun, 25 May 2014, Robert Thorpe wrote:

> I appreciate everyone's replies.
>
> Emanuel Berg distinguishes between different types of documents.
> Firstly, there are very simple documents that just contain text, those
> can be written as text files.  There are webpages which can be
> written in HTML.  Large documents can be written using LaTeX.  ToDo
> lists and organization can be written using Org mode.
>
> There's another type of document though, those that are simple, but too
> complex to make using plain text.  I was talking about writing letters
> earlier.  Even that case is tricky.  Have you tried printing a letter
> containing Unicode characters?  On my Xubuntu 12.04 system that doesn't
> work, they appear as escape codes.  Unfortunately, lots of programs
> still don't treat UTF-8 correctly.
>
> For someone who knows LaTeX writing small documents isn't a problem.  I
> have only done a few simple things with LaTeX.  I haven't used AucTex,
> only Emac's LaTeX mode.  In my job I write reports in Microsoft Word,
> I've never had a opportunity to write a long document in LaTeX.  In the
> future, if I have the time I'd like to learn LaTeX.  I understand though
> that it's a large and complex system, until I read this discussion I
> didn't know there were so many different dialects withe different
> capabilities.  It would take me months to learn it properly.  Similarly,
> Org mode is complex.  I intend to learn that sometime in the future too,
> but I haven't the time at present.  I spend quite a lot of time
> organizing things, so I expect that'll be time well spent.
>
> James Freer asked about this first, I think his situation is similar to
> mine.  I can't justify the time I'd need to learn LaTeX since I'd use it
> so infrequently.  That's why I'll continue using LibreOffice until
> something better comes along that won't take too long to learn.
>
> BR,
> Robert Thorpe

It's not that I haven't the time to learn Latex - i just wanted to know if 
emacs was going to produce a word processor plugin or whatever. I'm not an IT 
grad and I don't find emacs easy to learn. I use it for editing prose text as 
features I love namely; mid cursor positioning (very useful when typing pages 
and pages... irritating in other editors to constantly type at the bottom of 
the screen), wordstar keybindings (still the most efficient and still popular 
with writers), visual line mode (softwrap or whatever you want to call the 
equivalent) which few editors do effectively... even vim - my other favourite 
editor is gedit. Only editor I know of that does mid cursor positioning is Pico 
but doesn't do wordwrap.

I am going to give Latex a go. Had a look earlier today at some of the small 
apps like Gimme and Texstudio  - using those as an intro was worthwhile. I take 
on board the comments folk have made. You can use Latex for simple docs as well 
as the more sophisticated maths/scientific manual... and it's fantastic.

As for word processing, LO-writer and Abiword have had their day - both buggy 
I've found. Online Zoho and google docs for me have replaced them. Of course 
there are online latex apps which I'm going to have a look at. Then I'll try 
emacs.

My gripe with emacs is that it takes a lot of learning. Natural app for the IT 
graduate. I'd love to have a LUG group where I could sit down for an hour with 
someone and go through a few things to reduce the learning curve. I'd love to 
customise the menus to remove the coders stuff so I am left with a basic UI 
with just what I want.

yours
james