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I've been involved in electronic publishing for 25 years and am a
semi-advanced user of Word. Given that background, I would never, ever even
*consider* laying out any book destined for professional publication in
Word. It's simply not up to the task.
Yes, there are ways to force a square peg (Word) into a round hole (pro
pubs). But why would you ever want to? If your author is truly a TeX pro—and
it sounds like he is—it'll take him far less time to create his styles and
lay the books out than if you attempted to take his Word output and massage
it into something that's graphical appealing (and hopefully readable). Never
mind that he'll be left questioning the judgment of all who forced Word on
him; to this I doubt you'd ever hear an end.
> Chris
On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 5:03 AM, Erika Yanovich <ERIKA_y -at- rad -dot- com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Our chief scientist (the author of several textbooks) is writing a new
> series (something between an idiot's guide and a scientific textbook) that
> we should edit and format. The neighboring marcom dept will design the cover
> and take care of production. Our tool is MS Word and that's what we intended
> to use for this purpose, but the author claims that Word can't produce
> 'real' books (by this he means the look and feel of modern textbooks).
>
> Is this true? Are there any [hidden] advanced features of Word for this
> purpose, not used by tech writers? What tools would you use?
> The author prefers TeX for which he has (and can develop) styles guides.
> Needless to say, he is a power user of TeX and he is used to produce
> camera-ready copies in postscript.
>
> I have mixed feelings about him doing the formatting (apparently he doesn't
> mind, but isn't his time too expensive for this?), based on our definitions
> (which is what he apparently expects). Also, how would we get it for review?
> What formats are available to export from TeX?
>
> Any thoughts appreciated.
>
> Erika
>
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