MJ Ray wrote:

LxS <Alexis.Lee@uea.ac.uk> writes:

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Which, IMHO, means they're not really going to help you any more than your existing word processor. You'll probably still need to mess with the HTML output to get it looking nice.

Maybe you will still need to tweak it, but it'll be a lot less than disentangling word processor HTML output.

Well heck yes, but the Grail is not to tweak less, but not to tweak at all.

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Besides, it took me a day and a half to get a letter which looked even half decent using LaTeX, and I missed off a lot of the complicated bits. It is old, at least, and hence stable.

Depends on what you claim as "half-decent" and how well you read manuals. (You're a computing student, aren't you? ;-) ) You have to remember the 80/20 rule and ask whether the 20 is worth it.

80/20 is well known to me. I would say I did maybe three loops of that, when I could have done it in one loop with Word (space-greedy tables were what I needed, and apparently the one area LaTeX lacks). And I read manuals _extremely_ well... how else am I gonna learn anything at uni?

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MJR or anyone: is the Apache FOP any good? Can't be bothered to learn all about FOs if there isn't even a working processor yet...

I'll let Andrew say about how well it works, as I've not used it for some time. I believe it still works, though.

Woops. It sounded new, when I looked at the website, and having never heard of it...

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ps. and the stupid way they write tex/latex REALLY gets on my nerves. Define it as a macro ;-)

\tex and \latex, you mean? They're the problem, because it means every single time either of those accursed names comes up in the whole book, it's got dancing letters. Grr. Alexis -- Sometimes the blind man sees clearest. "The observer IS the observed! There is NO DIVISION between the CONTENT of consciousness and CONSCIOUSNESS ITSELF!" - Peekaboo, 'Rose is Rose' "Imagine a world without hypothetical situations" - Bram Moolenaar