Help! Anyone can tell me how to convert word to PDF

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by frabjous

Actually, somewhat ironically, XeLaTeX has better support for opentype fonts than even InDesign, if I'm not mistaken.

I also think in general (Xe)(La)TeX is better than InDesign -- in fact, I recently wrote to a publisher of one of my recent works, who used InDesign for layout, telling them I was rather unhappy with the output, and provided something I had typeset with XeLaTeX, and included a list of seven ways that my typesetting was better than their professional typesetting, even though I'm an amateur, and even the publisher agreed with me.

In fairness, however, it could well be that the typesetter in question was just incompetent, and the fault is not with InDesign itself.

Such a comparison would be interesting. Considering my limited experience with TeX and what I've seen from it in the past, I could be unfairly judging it myself.

However, there's not much in the way of samples about this site to recommend TeX, and replacing my current pain in the ass workflow with a completely different pain in the ass workflow that will yield inferior results for me is pointless.

[frabjous]

I could be unfairly judging InDesign myself--since I'm mainly comparing my fussy work in XeLaTeX with others' work with InDesign.

Unfortunately, even though I'm the author of the piece in question, I cannot legally distribute the officially published version made in InDesign. The version I made with XeLaTeX is here. If you'd like to see their version, send me an IM with your email address and I'll send it to you to compare.

I should be clear, however, that there are a lot of improvements I could make to that, and it looks the way it does mainly because I was emulating the journal's style. It's too cramped for my taste, but I was trying to match their pagination and fonts and line height exactly. Bembo and Frutiger also seem like a funny combination, but it's theirs, not mine. I despise end-notes, especially super-cramped ones like this, but again, I was just trying to match their output.

The improvements mainly involve the mathematical/logical formulas. They claimed it was impossible, for example, to have smooth breathing (spiritus lenis) accents rather than acute accents on the Greek vowels, put different spacing around operators as around connectives (or at least they didn't know how).

But there are traditional things mine did better on too. Mine has an ff-ligature. Theirs didn't. Overall, I think mine had more consistent white-space usage than theirs did. I think the kerning overall on mine was better.

This isn't really a great example of the best use of open type fonts in XeLaTeX. For that, see the Beauty of TeX page or the fontspec documentation.

I mainly just like the fact that mine was done with free software, and theirs with super expensive software.

I'm not really telling anyone else what to use -- if you're already familiar with, and have access, to InDesign, that's great. It's not as if you're reverting to Word or something atrocious like that.

[DaleDe]

Actually if you prefer something like Word you can use the free AbiWord and produce LaTeX output.

Dale

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by frabjous

I could be unfairly judging InDesign myself--since I'm mainly comparing my fussy work in XeLaTeX with others' work with InDesign.

Unfortunately, even though I'm the author of the piece in question, I cannot legally distribute the officially published version made in InDesign. The version I made with XeLaTeX is here. If you'd like to see their version, send me an IM with your email address and I'll send it to you to compare.

I should be clear, however, that there are a lot of improvements I could make to that, and it looks the way it does mainly because I was emulating the journal's style. It's too cramped for my taste, but I was trying to match their pagination and fonts and line height exactly. Bembo and Frutiger also seem like a funny combination, but it's theirs, not mine. I despise end-notes, especially super-cramped ones like this, but again, I was just trying to match their output.

The improvements mainly involve the mathematical/logical formulas. They claimed it was impossible, for example, to have smooth breathing (spiritus lenis) accents rather than acute accents on the Greek vowels, put different spacing around operators as around connectives (or at least they didn't know how).

But there are traditional things mine did better on too. Mine has an ff-ligature. Theirs didn't. Overall, I think mine had more consistent white-space usage than theirs did. I think the kerning overall on mine was better.

This isn't really a great example of the best use of open type fonts in XeLaTeX. For that, see the Beauty of TeX page or the fontspec documentation.

I mainly just like the fact that mine was done with free software, and theirs with super expensive software.

I'm not really telling anyone else what to use -- if you're already familiar with, and have access, to InDesign, that's great. It's not as if you're reverting to Word or something atrocious like that.

If their text doesn't include proper ff ligatures or kerning, then it is almost certainly the fault of the typesetter, rather than that of the software, unless they were using some ripped-off converted fonts with screwed up "keming" tables. That leads to suspicion involving most other flaws on their end as well.

However, you make a good point that TeX can be more useful for technical documents with lots of formulae. I don't know about maths integration in the latest version of InDesign, but it's always been a bit limited in my experience. I think even a lot of InDesign snobs will admit to that being a long-time strength of TeX.

As far as Word is concerned...I was able to do a few books in Word 2007 and 2010 with relatively little fuss before reinstalling ID, though admittedly those were all simple novels with relatively few styles. With Chinese, it's actually common practice with some publishers to use Word, as it's a very decent program for CJK typesetting. In English however, paragraph composition, optical margins, and hyphenation aren't anywhere near as sophisticated or optimized as those of ID or TeX. No OT small caps or swashes either, though metrics kerning, ligatures, and contextual alternates work in Word 2010. After looking at ebook-reader-oriented novels in EPUB and LRF for a while, even a Word-produced PDF is a breath of fresh air.

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Actually if you prefer something like Word you can use the free AbiWord and produce LaTeX output.

I would have guessed that LyX would be a more straightforward way of getting LaTeX output from something more Word-esque, since that's more or less all it does, though I shouldn't knock AbiWord until I've tried it. Actually I've been meaning to try it.

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

If their text doesn't include proper ff ligatures or kerning, then it is almost certainly the fault of the typesetter, rather than that of the software, unless they were using some ripped-off converted fonts with screwed up "keming" tables. That leads to suspicion involving most other flaws on their end as well.

Agreed. I was sure ID could do the ligatures, etc., I just didn't know if it was the kind of thing you had to activate specially, as it is in Word.

...though metrics kerning, ligatures, and contextual alternates work in Word 2010. After looking at ebook-reader-oriented novels in EPUB and LRF for a while, even a Word-produced PDF is a breath of fresh air.

I'm glad to hear it. I actually probably have a worse view of Word than is really called for, mainly because it can generate nice output if used right; it's just that most Word users don't use it to the best of its capabilities. But the users aren't entirely to blame; it doesn't encourage better practices the way LaTeX does, by focusing on semantic mark-up.