The best word processor for academic writing

hey! does anyone have a recommendation for a good word processor for academic writing? i am going to need it for a phd which will be around 300-400 pages long, only text and footnotes.
i have used word all my life, but found that during my master thesis, which was about 150 pages long, that word was lagging all the time and it was a real drag to use.
how is pages? i never see anyone in academia use it? is this only because of problems with converting .doc files? should i separate writing and formatting the thesis and use something like scrivener? heard latex is really good but more for engineering/mathematics?
thank you guys so much for any advice!

Other urls found in this thread:

tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf
overleaf.com/
youtube.com/watch?v=SzA2YODtgK4&t=1173s
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
ctan.org/pkg/pakageName?lang=en
tex.stackexchange.com/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Microsoft Word

LaTeX

Based Björk.

op here. i want to try out latex (windows 10), but there seem to be a lot of different distros (and different editors?)? sorry i have absolutely no experience with latex. how do i get started?

>"working on PhD"
>never seen anyone in academia use word

No one under the age of 18 may access this website. Come back after you've finished high school.

what?

i wrote that i have never seen anyone in academia use the program pages? what is your problem?

Use proTeXt

When I used windows I used mikTeX and edited in vim.
TexStudio is 6/10
TexMaker is 7/10
Atom w/ latex plugin is 8/10

install miktex first and then install texmaker. texmaker is then where you write the text.

google docs will let you do your thesis on the go

Nano

If humanities use Scrivener. If sciences use LaTeX.

>AOL Chat - 17.11.1995

vim+LaTeX

tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf

ed

Either groff (-mom mode) or LaTeX.

>academic writing
The gold standard has always been LaTeX. I was late to it myself, but now that I've learned it (by just doing it), I can say it's a great tool. Try overleaf.com/ if you want to have a quick taste.

Org-Mode in emacs is a meta-markup editor that can translate into any format such as Latex, html, pdf, you name it. It really does everything. I know GNU stuff get shilled here a lot, but Org-Mode is legitimately an awesome note taking and task organizing editor.
youtube.com/watch?v=SzA2YODtgK4&t=1173s

In my field, the gold standard is MS Word, plus Endnote as your citation manager. I used Google Docs and had to do the citations by hand, which sucked. LaTex is used in some of the sciences.

Really, the correct answer is that you will use whatever the fuck your advisor tells you to use. In fact, that's pretty much the default answer for everything in your life for the next five to seven years.

Also, you won't last three months with writing like that. Get it in gear.

I couldn't recommend LaTeX (+editor of choice) more. However I would strongly recommend switching to Linux and using git (or other VCS) for minimal headaches in the long term.
If you're only starting your PhD now you have plenty of time to learn it all.

miketex is a good start

>I would strongly recommend switching to Linux
The preferred OS for authors world wide.

UTOPIA SUCKS

cat >> file

fuck formulas
fuck graphics

OP sounds like he'd need few enough major features that he could have a cheat-sheet of about 10 options, then do all the visuals in the header.

To me "only text and footnotes" implies just the \section family (sub, subsub), \textbf{for bold}, \textit{for italics}, \underline{for underline}, and \footnote{for the footnotes}.

OP could also look into that bibliography package I forgot the name of, but really that's enough that he can get 99% of the work done.

You shouldn't trust LaTeX cultists.

use LyX

It is if you're Neal Stephenson.

Whatever autistic shit you'll end up using, remember there's pandoc to convert it to usable formats.

roff

LaTeX is harmful

vim

Why wouldn't you use LaTeX if you're going to be dealing with hundreds of pages and many footnotes.

Do you realise how much of a pain a 400 page word processor file would be to manage? With LaTeX he'd be able to split each section and chapter apart for easier management.

Doesn't groff need an announcement for every paragraph? Like, .LP and .PP?

Real patricians use Latex.
Everyone else uses word.

TexMaker

I haven't used windows in a while but these are the recommendations I usually give to people I work with:
Read
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
ctan.org/pkg/pakageName?lang=en
or
tex.stackexchange.com/
when you need information.
miktex is one of the popular distributions.
I personally recommend to just install the full offline one.
The other option lets you install only the stuff you need and then install things automatically when needed.
The problem with this is last time I used it, you had to run the editor as root to install the packages and I think that is a flawed design.
Texmaker is the editor that comes with it and it is okay but not ideal.
One default I despise is the option to inform the user if the document changes.
By default this is off and that makes the editor dangerous to have anyone use.
Vim also have this flaw but vim users usually program this feature themselves so they are less dangerous.
A much better editor is kile but I don't know how difficult this one is to install on windows and I doubt you want to compile it yourself.
As for getting started. Try your best to avoid managing anything yourself.
With latex, formatting and content is two separate things and you should just write the content until formatting becomes relevant.
Don't think of latex as something you need to learn, those people waste too much time on it, I have taught 1st semester bachelor students how to write it in 30 minutes and they have been able to hand in lab reports a week or two after that.
With latex, if something is difficult, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

By now I've seen quite a few videos about org-mode, constantly trying to see if truly as awesome as the presenters claim. But every time they hacked and customized it so much it's hard to see what is org-mode and what is their stuff. Beyond that, it never seems to look like more than a cross between markup and latex, with some form of method folding. All the other stuff like todos and calendars shouldn't be kept within a text editor, there are better tools for that. I'm probably still missing "it", but it just doesn't look that special.

Vim with LaTex.

Obviously nano.

Joe uses Latex
I use google docs

You can use "traps" to automate things. Trap executes macros automatically for you whenever it is triggered. For example you can set a trap at beginning(header) to embed heading text and trap at footer to make pages numerated.

Although I wouldn't recommend learning it. It was interesting to learn, but not practical to use. It's like assembler of markup languages.