[CLUE-Tech] Reliable writing editors?

[Timothy C. Klein]

* Sean LeBlanc (seanleblanc at americanisp.net) wrote:
> On 02-16 09:42, Jeffery Cann wrote:
> > 
> > > On 02-02 14:09, Jeffery Cann wrote:
> > > > Maybe I should try LyX and stop worrying about formatting.
> > 
> > On Sunday 02 February 2003 02:41 pm, Sean LeBlanc wrote:
> > > If you do, let me know how that turns out. I took a half-hearted stab at it
> > > over a year ago when I was getting frustrated with resume problems in Word
> > > 2000. I was not able to get a CV class to be "read", IIRC. I know nothing
> > > about TeX/LaTeX, so that probably wasn't helping, either. :)
> > 
> > LyX is definitely cool.  I have been writing with it for a week or so.  It's 
> > easy to use and after reading portions of the tutorial, I think the LyX 
> > paradigm makes sense to me - i.e., don't worry about formatting.
> > 
> > To use it, you simply need to use the left-hand selection to apply a different 
> > style.
> > 
> > Also, for your resume problem, LyX will export to PDF format.  This is a good 
> > enough reason to eschew MS.
> > 
> > Matt Gushee commented on the document templates and the XForms GUI toolkit.  I 
> > don't mind either.

> About exporting to PDF, that is nice, but based on personal experience with
> resumes, I still have to maintain the resume in Word or "port" the resume to
> Word, for the simple reason that I've had recruiters/HR people say they
> cannot read the PDF, and some job postings specify "resumes in Word format".
> You'd think the scanning software so many of these folks use would allow
> text just as well as Word for the input, but... 

Have you ever tried RTF?  I am curious if it is robust enough to contain
all the formatting that one would need for something like a resume.  If
so, it is a more or less open file format, editors for it are available in
Linux, and MS Word seems to open RTF files transparently.  The
technically un-savvy might not even realize it was not a Word file.

I wish it was the kind of world where I could say:  "What, you want a
resume in a proprietary binary format!  Are you insane?  I don't need
your job."  Even better would be if they said "You're right!  What *were*
we thinking?  We will drop that requirement." (Ha, really dreaming now).

Alas, it is not...

Tim
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==  Timothy Klein || teece at silverklein.net  ==
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