[ale] Anybody writing chemical equations in OpenOffice?

James Sumners james.sumners at gmail.com
Thu Sep 4 18:57:22 EDT 2008


Hooboy! That anonymous is completely clueless. BibTeX[1] is quite
possibly the _easiest_ way to manage references ever devised. Simply
enter the reference in your .bib file and use \ref{} in your .tex
file. That's just WAY too much to learn, isn't it? And I like to see
him tell folks like JSTOR that BibTeX isn't supported. JSTOR will
generate a .bib file for you based on the articles you have specified.
And there are plenty of other journal databases that do the exact same
thing.

Sorry for getting off topic, but that "source" is just too laughable
to let slide.

One more thing, what about this giant list[3] of bibliographic
software that works with OpenOffice? Does none of that count? What
about Zotero[4]? It has integration with _both_ MS Word and
OpenOffice. And! it exports BibTeX.

[1] -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibtex
[2] -- http://www.jstor.org/
[3] -- http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Bibliographic/Software_and_Standards_Information
[4] -- http://www.zotero.org/

On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 4:54 PM, Paul Cartwright <ale at pcartwright.com> wrote:
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> Thompson Freeman wrote:
>> I thank the list for the help earlier regrading getting OpenOffice to
>> create some chemical symbols. The technique does require going into the
>> math equation editor, but it isn't all that horrid.
>>
>> I think I have the current level of processing under control, which is
>> creating full chemical equations for my students. But these are simple,
>> non-equilibrium equations, so I'm looking for the techniques needed to
>> go forward. Yes, I'm wandering around Google, but it would really be a
>> help if I found somebody who uses OpenOffice to create chemically
>> oriented documents to ask questions of.
>>
>> Anybody on this list doing this type of writing??
>>
> found this:
> http://www.linux.com/feature/118986
>
>  OO Writer is useless for scientific writing as it lacks important plug-ins!
> Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 132.187.161.101] on October 13, 2007 02:47 PM
> Absulute majority of scientific writing in biomedical, chemical and
> social sciences (which together constitute for absolute majority of all
> scientific papers published today) is done using your hated M$ Word.
> Why? Because managing of citation databases required for any scientific
> paper depends on EndNote or ReferenceManager - these are plugins for MS
> Word, both Windows and Mac versions. No any such plugin for OO. Untill
> that OO Writer, AbiWord etc are USELESS for scientific writing! Yes, I
> know that LatEX has something for managing references... which will take
> me a LOT of time to learn (I have my scientific objectives to
> concentrate on....), and the data (working citation databases) will be
> not shearable within scientific community. Yes, I know that LaTEX is
> used widely within engineering community, but that's completely
> different story.
> - --
> Paul Cartwright
> Registered Linux user # 367800
> Registered Ubuntu User #12459
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-- 
James Sumners
http://james.roomfullofmirrors.com/

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts
pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it
is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become
drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
CH:D 59


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