[kkfx]

Honestly? Office automation suites have had their day, along with the people who use them. It's high time people learned to produce documents of typographic quality by writing in markup languages, it doesn't really matter if it's raw LaTeX or some DSL, and it's time the majority learned "the power of text": full-text searchable, easily manipulated, versionable, and manageable, compared to those monsters born in another era with the sole intent of letting untrained secretarial staff use a desktop computer.

Anyone who doesn't get that simply doesn't have enough IT skills to work in this day and age; it's time to say it loud and clear.

[samrus]

> the sole intent of letting untrained secretarial staff use a desktop computer.

I dont like this "skill issue" rhetoric. The barrier of entry being lower is good for everyone, if you dont directly use simple tools, then you will still benefit from others in society using it to produce information and what not. Also how do you propose spreadsheets work with markup?

[ImJamal]

Office provides far more than just typographic quality. They provide spell check and grammar check which is what most people care about. Many people creating latex, as far as I know, are using text editors which are missing those features or are quite limited.

[kkfx]

Actually office suites fails to provide typographic quality. Fails also to provide useful computation and presentation tools for the modern time, spell checking and (limited) grammar checking are not their exclusive as well.

Essentially ALL features of all office suites I know are sub-par to most other classic tools born before them, and they also are limited and limiting.

[oblio]

LOL, have you tried to maintain any sort of huge table using markup?

[kkfx]

I do them in LaTeX and org-mode, but in general tables should be limited in document, the abuse common in the office circles is a typographical abuse and those who makes them should be taught about typography in general