Re: Microsoft makes a lot of money, Is Intel exceptionally unsuccessful as an architecture designer?

On 23/09/2024 12:24, Thomas Koenig wrote:

David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> schrieb:

On 20/09/2024 07:53, Thomas Koenig wrote:

MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com> schrieb:

On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 23:44:48 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
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On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:20:56 -1000, Lynn Wheeler wrote:
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MS employees were commenting that customers had been buying the latest
releases for the new features ... but it had reached the point where the
releases they were running now had 98% of the features they wanted (and
the company wasn't sure what to do next).

>
Verity Stob once asked the question: “name one feature of Microsoft
Office that you use daily, that was added this century”.

>
I bought a hammer in 1977, I can still use it today...
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As far as I know, the only feature I use (and an unnecessary one) is
the coloring of URL text blue and underlining it, that was added this
century.

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I don't use it daily (that would be Saturdays and Sundays, too)
but often enough - the new formula editor is better than the
old one, especially since you can paste LaTeX source into it.
To make up for it, the new method of writing equation references
is braindead.
>
But bricking the old formula editor... that was Not Nice (TM).

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To me, the answer is just to use LaTeX.

 Not always possible if you're working in a company.

True indeed.  I typically use LibreOffice if I have to generate a docx file, otherwise LaTeX for serious documents and markdown and pandoc for small and simple documents.

 But LaTeX has its own issues;  typst can actually be a viable
alternative for some of the things that are difficult with LaTeX,
due to its limitations as a macro on top of TeX (separate BibTeX
runs, for example).

Sure, LaTeX has its own challenges.  It is not very WYSIWYG, even with tools like LyX.  Macro programming for LaTeX is not always the simplest task (though there are packages that make it a lot easier).  And it's not hard to make a small typo with the result of reams of incomprehensible errors instead of nice document.  But you can also do a lot of nice stuff with it, and produce very high quality results.  And unlike word processors or online systems like typst, it's easy to generate combined sources for LaTeX from other tools - I've put together systems using templates, data from logger systems, databases, generated graphs, etc., controlled by Python code to make automatic reports that are well beyond what can be done with many other tools.