[ale] recommended writing tool in anticipation of commercial submission

[Brian Pitts]

James P. Kinney III wrote:
> After reading the other responses, I would recommend that the decision
> be based solely on the required input format from the publisher. 
> 
> If it's any of the word variants, then use OpenOffice.org. Ditto if they
> want a wordperfect wpd.

AFAIK OO.o can't export wpd.

> Many (if not still most) of the peer reviewed scientific publishers
> still prefer a latex output file. They are not going to do any editing
> on the document itself so the pure postscript format get plopped into a
> printing press plate maker directly.
 >
 > Many places will prefer a Mac/Adobe format like what was mentioned
 > earlier. Most of those printers are going to be using a similar system
 > for their shop.

At least in the social sciences, a lot of journals require pdf 
submissions. When I worked at a newspaper, layout was done in InDesign 
but we sent pdf to the press. Thankfully, pdf is easy to generate from 
LaTeX, OpenOffice, or really any application that can print thanks to 
CUPS-PDF.

I've been using LaTeX and the Beamer class for a while to make 
presentations, and I'm starting to use it for my papers as well. It 
really helps me to focus on the writing process and the structure of the 
documents. You don't necessarily have to learn LaTex to gain the 
advantages of doing so; take a look at http://www.lyx.org/about/intro.php

-Brian