Count yourself very lucky you are in such a fortunate position where you have no real problems with your PhD. Yes you are over dramatizing and if this is the way you react to such a trivial problem then god help you if you ever have any real problems!!!! Sounds like a case of attention seeking on your part

I will also add that your remark to sleepyhead was a very poor attempt at putting the knife in.

Wow, people, being very harsh. The OP initiated an interesting discussion. Perhaps they could have focussed on the relative merits of the different software packages, but in my opinion, I'm not sure how they were being as dramatic as the dramatic responses warranted.

I am of the opinion that certain software solutions are much more powerful than others. I am of the opinion that it is a legitimate topic for discussion.
So your pet died. Sorry for you. The OP used the word 'sad', so what?

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I don't think the OP was so much the problem. It was the fact that despite a number of people giving sensible solutions (Open office, printing things out, pdf converters) the OPer persisted with the view that this was a distressing issue, rather than an irritation which is how a lot of people would have experienced it.

References to being on the verge of tears, experiencing 'shock' and having to resign oneself to change only occurring if your supervisor dies are melodrama in my book. Explaining that your distress stems from the contrast of this issue to 'everything else [being] wonderful' is not likely to endear yourself to a bunch of grad students with far bigger research/personal problems than software disagreements.

Nobody has criticised the OPer's personal preference for using LaTeX - the issue under debate is one of teamwork, and I don't think the comments have been inappropriate. As others have said, I would be really really pleased if this was the only kind of difficulty that had affected my PhD. I, too, think the comment aimed at Sleepyhead was unfair.

Thanks rjb... I wasn't going to pick up on the rather personal attack (which is why I offered a reply steered away from the point); but as you have, I'll just add a little something.

Hildegueden (and everyone, I guess)... a PhD is a lonely and isolating experience for most people, especially during the last few months of writing up; but for some people it is almost continuous throughout the three years. This forum offers an outlet for those seeking advice, help, or even friendship. Whilst I cannot claim to have a monopoly on the 'PhD experience', I have clearly been through a lot (most of my problems have not even been posted here), and I try to offer tips where I can. Sometimes these tips are essentially a call for perspective on the person seeking advice - as in this case. We all lose perspective at times, often acutely when working alone or obsessively as with a PhD.
The benefit of this forum is anonymity, where we choose to reveal as much as we like about ourselves; but it is also a downfall as in this case where a poster feels they can make excessive and purely speculative comment on another contributor's PhD. The issues I have had with my PhD have not been to do with 'details', they have been fundamental.

And just to note, I am a social science PhD with mixed methods due to complete this Autumn, just 3 years and 3 months after starting. Which is not bad given I have had a change of supervisor, have had to work up to 20 hours per week in a shop throughout a full-time PhD, on top of teaching, in order to pay my dad's mortgage so he is not made homeless, and have had personal crisis after crisis (best friend's dad dying, another close friend moving from advanced HIV to AIDS, brother becoming deaf, another brother being sent to Afghanistan, mum having breast cancer, grandmother dying and being diagnosed with cancer myself).

But if you think that compared to all that the issue about LaTeX vs Word is a real problem then fine. Good luck to you, I hope you are very successful and have a great academic career. I just pity the student you may have in a few years who does come to you with a problem such as the ones I have had, as I am sure you will be as dismissive of them as you were of me.

Thank to HazyJane and others too:-x

very well said sleepyhead,

I hope that puts it into perspective for the person who posted this thread. It is rather low when people start personally attacking you on this site for trying to help them by giving a perspective on their issues. I have on occassion heard people post rather insulting replies to threads I have posted on when all i have done is contributed by providing moral support or advice or when needs be :a kick up the backside ( when i feel people are just being silly!)!

I dropped out of my PhD and still contribute to this forum as I am still a graduate student. I feel I can offer a lot of advice to people having trouble with their PhDs and I may well have another go at a PhD in the near future.

By the way sleepyhead. I liked your response to the low blow. Very sharp indeed ;-)

Fair points all. It is a good idea to keep your work in the context of your life. It's tough to deal with the things that life throws at us, and I hope you are able to deal with it as well as is needed.

Despite the fact of software incompatibility not being the most serious, pressing, immediate of problems, it is one that interests me greatly.
Someone mentioned that there are programmes which can convert pdf files to doc. do these retain formatting and other guidelines.
I am very interested to hear recommendations.

Thanks

usually speaking they do. but it will depend on the package you use. put in a search into google for document conversion programs and you should come across a few that are free. Have a play around with a few and see which one comes out top!!!

First of all, I'm not attempting to put the knife in anybody’s (perhaps I would like to put in Rjb203, but I won't). Secondly, sorry about “cloudy sky” but I said it because I've already knew you lived in England ;-). I got to admit that you are absolutely right Sleepyhead: It is not a problem at all and of course is incomparable to any of the other problems exposed in this forum. My situation was that I wasn't able to take control over the paper manuscript even after the second hard copy was returned to me with corrections. I could've written it in word, in latex, etc. but my team coworkers required it in the e-version because it was not good enough.

I live in France and my Ph D is in physical-chemistry. Plotting and treating experimental data is our daily bread but this time the analysis of such data was beyond my capabilities and that's why I looked for an excuse, in this case the incompatibility of the software. Anyway, that's over.. One day I'll return to Latex.

Sleepyhead I liked very much what you wrote and I thank you for that. If I may give and advise about the “lonely and isolating experience of writing up”, well I felt the same about it but here is my advise. Try not to be alone when writing, i.e. do it in cafes (here we love cafes), in places were there are people around and where once in a while they say “good day”. Nowadays you can carry all the information you need in your lap and you can be 3G online connected all the time. It worked for me, it's been working for writers and poets, why not for researchers?

About the PDF converters, they are a pain in the a.. especially when the documents contain tables, equations, chemical reactions, and references. Useless.

I somehow doubt you were actually refering to the weather in this case. This was clearly a poor attempt at putting the knife into someone who was just trying to give you perspective and an even poorer attempt to backtrack and claim otherwise. I am glad to see sleepyhead has put it in perspective for you as I sounds like you need to wake up and stop complaining about trivial trivial problems.

By all means put the knife into me if it makes you happy. Sounds like you get off on that kind of thing. All I have said on this topic is pretty much what everyone else who posted on this topic has said: Stop being a baby and get on with it as it sounds like your PhD is going just fine and you have very little to worry about!!!

If you cant handle being told off when you are complaining about silly things then then you shouldnt really ask for advice in the first place :p

Well! the sky in Liverpool has been beautifully clear all day today, maybe the capital of Manc has been the same. Absolutley cracking the flags.

I'm impressed with your progress Sleepyhead! Blimey! I hope we can return to supporting eachother now.