Adobe CS2 for writing a PhD thesis???

[Pittsax]

I'm following this thread intently, since I'm also close to dissertation-writing mode.

I recently finished up a fellowship proposal in Word, and did all right with the figures. The trick for me was to make all of the figures in Photoshop (including the ones with Excel graphs), except for the vector-based ones, and pasted them into Word. I used a text box to create the caption, grouped the caption with the figure, and then set the wrapping to "Square" I usually try to keep the figures either along the left or right margins. It worked reasonably well, and is the best I've come up with. If anyone can do better, I'd love to hear. I'm sure LaTeX is great and all, but learning it might be more of a headache than just going through Word.

 

[balamw]

It worked reasonably well, and is the best I've come up with. If anyone can do better, I'd love to hear. I'm sure LaTeX is great and all, but learning it might be more of a headache than just going through Word.

You got lucky?

A key figure in a proposal I was working on last year in Office XP on Windows kept disappearing. It somehow ended up "between pages" when some text around it was changed. You could see it on the screen, but it would not show up in the printed version. Had to copy it to a new document and reformat the whole thing.

A couple of other considerations:

1) LaTeX is far more desirable if your dissertation includes many mathematical formulas, if not there is less of an advantage. Nothing touches TeX in mathematical layout.

2) LaTeX is also nice in that the basic file format is text, which allows for making use of the excellent revision control systems out there like CVS and Subversion to track your changes MUCH better than Word will allow.

3) One way I have managed stay sane working on collaborative documents in Word (the only reason to keep trying to use Word!) is to try and keep the text in Word and the figures in a separate PowerPoint document until they absuloutely need to be integrated. Then go ahead and sprinkle the figures in the appropriate spots and following the format's guidelines once the text is very close to final.

4) Word (on Windows at least) is far from WYSIWYG. Change printer drivers or send the document to someone with a different version of Word or the fonts installed and the whole thing can get reformatted for you in some not-so-subtle ways. (Changing line-breaks pushing text to new pages that didn't exist before, etc....)​

B

 

[.Andy]

Not sure if this has been posted but the other thing to keep in mind is that you won't be (or really shouldn't be) the only one who will be reading/editing you thesis. Remember that you'll need to send the digital file to different people to read so make sure they have the same program or one that is compatable. In my experience the majority of professors are practically useless when it comes to computers.

Also in the end most unis will be keen to keep a digital file of you thesis to put in the library or (if you agree) to submit it to an worldwide online digital theses project. If you'll want to participate make sure you final file type is compatable again .

 

[Nuc]

MathType

You got lucky?

1) LaTeX is far more desirable if your dissertation includes many mathematical formulas, if not there is less of an advantage. Nothing touches TeX in mathematical layout.
​

I would use MathType (add-in to word/powerpoint) it's great and is a great time saver. You can also choose to translate into LaTex if you want. From the translate you can paste it into LaTex. I use MathType exclusively now.

Nuc

 

[crackpip]

A couple of other considerations:

1) LaTeX is far more desirable if your dissertation includes many mathematical formulas, if not there is less of an advantage. Nothing touches TeX in mathematical layout.

2) LaTeX is also nice in that the basic file format is text, which allows for making use of the excellent revision control systems out there like CVS and Subversion to track your changes MUCH better than Word will allow.

3) One way I have managed stay sane working on collaborative documents in Word (the only reason to keep trying to use Word!) is to try and keep the text in Word and the figures in a separate PowerPoint document until they absuloutely need to be integrated. Then go ahead and sprinkle the figures in the appropriate spots and following the format's guidelines once the text is very close to final.

4) Word (on Windows at least) is far from WYSIWYG. Change printer drivers or send the document to someone with a different version of Word or the fonts installed and the whole thing can get reformatted for you in some not-so-subtle ways. (Changing line-breaks pushing text to new pages that didn't exist before, etc....)​

B

All excellent points. My advisor has been burned many times with things not showing up right when moved to different output types, computers, etc. He was a Windows user (I've recently converted him back and has a new PB on the way). I agree Office files are hardly WYSIWYG, and in addition Mac/PC compatibility is hardly seamless. I've never ran into case where PDF's created using LaTeX didn't output properly.

I'm not a big fan of MathType. It still doesn't take care of issues with equations not displaying properly when opened on other computers, even if they have MathType installed. But it does export to LaTeX so it does have some plusses. I guess that I've used LaTeX long enough; I find it quicker to type it all in myself (especially with my own macros setup) rather than using gui apps.

crackpip

 

[UKnjb]

You might be making your life really really difficult, and be the poorer by a country mile, if you try and produce a thesis in Adobe CS. Why not stick with Word for the basic text input (never mind the formatting too much at this stage) and for incorporating your EndNote CAYW references? A whole heap of graphics can be done in Powerpoint (and subsequently paste-special into Word as pictures) or tarted up with a number of other relatively cheap packages and then pasted in as pictures. I agree that keeping your chapters separate is essential in Word. When everything is typed in, formatting your text, with styles, is straightforward and you can get it to near-perfection states. And at least you are not doing it on a PC where it would be a total trial. Whatever happened to Claris Works? That was a good package.
But then. But then, when everything is looking correct, pass the whole lot through Adobe Acrobat to creat a really high-quality pdf file.
Adobe is brilliant - but sooooooo expensive.
And good luck with your write-up, viva and everything.

 

[portent]

Actually, one of the best things for this sort of work is/was Adobe FrameMaker. It's a word processor, but was basically designed for technical documentation and long academic papers.

Unfortunately, Adobe hasn't updated it in a long time. (On the Mac, it only runs in Classic. There was a push to get it ported to OS X, but that doesn't seem to be going anywhere now.)

 

[neocell]

Save yourself time, money and stress and go with Word and EndNote for the text and Powerpoint for the figures. Do all your typing without any figures, just type "figure x" wherever you want it, and when you're ready to send it out for critiquing send out both the ppt and doc files. Once you're completely happy with it, insert each figure as a jpg on a completely blank page for each figure, ie page breaks, 1 figure per page just the figure legend no other text. And don't save chapters as this will screw EndNote up. My 2¢

But still buy CS2 for all the fun things you can do with it

 

[mwpeters8182]

Another vote here for LaTeX, as it can handle works cited as well. It's not terribly hard to learn, especially if you use an editor made especially for it.

 

[Epicurus]

I've written a fair number of papers, several of them over 50 pages with numerous figures, tables, equations, sections, footnotes, references, etc. I've used Word (PC and Mac), Publisher, Pagemaker, and LaTeX. TeX wins in every feature I've come accross except spell checking. I've cobbled together a solution, but it was far from easy. The learning curve on TeX is steep, but the rewards are amazing.

Equations with mathtype are okay, and I've had success with it in the past, but keeping the numbering straight when you are editing a large document is a hassle. TeX lets me type equations faster than I could put them together in mathtype and allows me to do real targeted referencing within the text. I don't have to remember the number for the equation I want (which doesn't make any sense in a long paper since the number probably changes ten times a day), I can tag each equation with a label and reference that. When I do publish the TeX document to PDF, the appropriate number will be added in then.

The same goes for figures. References are to tags, not numbers, so adding a figure to the front of a document isn't a hassle. If you have the time to learn to integrate Octave and GNUplot into your system, everything flows together perfectly.

The best part in my opinion, is the ease you can change formats and templates. I can make sweeping changes to the structure and layout of the document by changing one line of code in the header.

BibTeX (via Bibdesk on my Mac) is very nice too. Moving to this from EndNote might be a hassle (I don't really know, since I never had to switch), but I'm pretty sure its worth it.

LaTeX is an ease to work with, once you get over the hump of having to learn another language. Think of all the time you've taken to really leverage Word into doing what you want. As quirky as LaTeX may be at first, it is still easier to gain mastery of it than of Word. Take the time, learn the craft. Once you do, you'll never look back.

 

[brendel95]

Latex is the way to go. I used it for my Ph.D dissertation last year and compared it with my friends dissertation written by word (No comparision). Latex wins in every aspect. (Equation, font, graph, .... you name it). If the school had Ph.D program for some time, somebody should have template. Get it and use it. As a note, I used matlab for all the graph (even 3D graph). Latex is really easy to learn (almost natural english).

Good luck