N久没有更新博客了，终于在09年元旦发现一些有意思的东东得以更新一下^_^  还有啦，最重要的是祝亲爱的你们元旦快乐，在09年里面充满平安和喜乐! May God Bless Your Way!

老风格，继续转载，一个关于文字处理软件的文章，文章作者是经历了全部手写到用计算机的各种软件写自己文章的过程。庆幸的是我们只经历了其一半，从其第五点开始到最后第八点。

Default file formats 

By Prof.Gelman 

source:http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/blog/

I was going to write that I used to write articles in Latex and now I write them in Word (for some examples, see here), and then speculate about how the change in format might change how and what I write.

But then I thought that more background could be useful.

1. The pencil-and-paper era. Back when I was a kid I used to write everything by hand. I was proficient with the eraser. In high school I developed a style where I'd outline the English composition first and then write it.

2. Typewriter. In college we had to type our papers. Which I did, using my little typewriter (which had been my sister's before that), until . . .

3. Mark's homemade word processor. My college roommate was a CS major and had an Atari computer. I persuaded him to write a word processor in 6502 assembler, and I ended up using it more than he did.

I took a couple of English classes that required a paper every week or so, and to get everything done, I developed a system whereby I first diagrammed my plan on a single sheet of paper using circles and arrows, then wrote a series of outlines, the last of which had at least one sentence per paragraph of the final paper. I'd then take that outline, sit at the computer, and type up the paper pretty much in one take.

4. Troff. I wrote my senior thesis on a campus computer which printed out really nice--not that yucky dot-matrix stuff. I formatted it using Troff.

5. Pencil and paper again. For homework assignments in graduate school I went back to pencil and paper. I was still doing graphs by hand on graph paper (but that's another story).

6. Latex. One of my colleagues told me about Latex, and this quickly became my standard. When I wanted to write an article, I'd take an old latex file and map out sections and subsections, then fill in different parts when I was ready. I did it this way for several books and a few zillion articles.

I have to admit, I've never learned Bibtex, so I spend lots of time cutting and pasting bibliographic references.

7. Html. A few years ago I started this blog (originally intended as a way for members of our research group to communicate with each other). I often use the blog to record thoughts that later are published more formally. Writing in Html puts these thoughts in a different shape than what was happening in Latex. More conversational, less locked into a formal structure.

8. Word. Recently, for some reason I've been writing articles (and our forthcoming book) in Word, which doesn't work so well when I have formulas but somehow seems smoother otherwise.

The medium does affect the message. In many ways I'm dissatisfied with my current approach of composing at the keyboard. Maybe I'll try pencil and paper outlining for awhile.

Oh, yeah, . . . happy new year.