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With all due respect, it doesn't sound like your problem is a technical
problem at all. I've felt bad before when a senior person chose to do a
task I didn't feel his pay grade should be doing, but it's his choice how to
spend his time. If that's what he wants to do, so be it. Move on to the
other 5K things on your to-do list. As for the editing, dealing with
opinionated writers who question every dot and comma is part of the job
description for an editor. It's never fun but a good editor can handle it
and I'm sure yours is one of those.
Sally
On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 9:36 AM, Erika Yanovich <ERIKA_y -at- rad -dot- com> wrote:
> Julie,
>
> Thanks for your thoughts, Appreciate it. My problem is not the tool to use
> for formatting, it's more the thought of his time vs our time in terms of
> costs. Obviously his time is much more expensive than ours and formatting
> seems a rather 'mechanical' job once the template is set. I feel somewhat
> guilty that he spends his time on a task that could be done by a DTP person
> who makes much less, even though the author likes TeX and doesn't mind doing
> his own formatting. So, actually the problem is more psychological in
> nature. I'd like to tell him that we can do the same job with Word, but
> apparently that is not the case.
>
> We need to edit his files (general editing) and this really makes my editor
> nervous, because the author is very opinionated and writes well. He will
> question every dot and comma.
>
> Thanks again,
> Erika
>
> <-----Original Message----->
> <
> I'm a bit confused as to why when dealing with an scientist who has
> already written multiple textbooks, and is described as a "power user"
> of TeX, anyone would want him to abandon a tool that Wikipedia
> describes as "designed with two main goals in mind: to allow anybody
> to produce high-quality books using a reasonable amount of effort, and
> to provide a system that would give exactly the same results on all
> computers, now and in the future."
>
> As a scientist, he's going to want to have his formula laid out in a
> particular manner, and he's using a tool designed to do just that.
> He's already familiar with formatting, and wants to use a style guide.
>
> So I guess I'm not seeing the problem here? Unless it's that he's not
> using Word like the rest of the world, and instead is using a tool
> that the scientific community specifically uses for book layout?
>
> What is it that you need to do with his files? General editing?
> Where is the advantage of forcing him into Word?
> >
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