LaTeX seems to be the software most mentioned for writing up in? Is Word really that awful? My research is qualitative case study so doubtful there will be any chart based data presented so is it worth the hassle of learning LaTeX, especially as I'm not massively tech savy. If I do, where is the best download site/link for LaTeX? I've googled it but really don't want to download a rogue with viruses that will kill my laptop! Thanks in advance. :-D

If you don't want to faff around learning the code for LaTeX then Lyx is a more user friendly option. It gives you all the functionality of LaTeX but in a GUI environment similar to Word, i.e. point and click instead of typing code. There is also a track changes option in Lyx although I haven't used this yet but apparently it's very similar to Word. The finished document also looks nicer than anything produced in Word though you do have to allow LaTeX to place figures etc where it deems them most appropriate.

I fell out with Word after it nearly ate my MSc dissertation, though I was using it on an old laptop at the time. My sup put me on to LaTeX at the beginning of PhD but I recently switched to Lyx because it has a rather nice built in thesis template which at my stage (entering 4th year soon) makes life a hell of a lot easier.


You can get Lyx from here and it doesn't take too long to install, the documentation is also worth a read through to get started.

http://www.lyx.org/

Thanks pixie. Yes I'd rather not learn code on top of all the other PhD stuff to do! I'll have a look. ;-D

Just to add my penny's worth, I know Word could be problematical way back in the past and perhaps this is where it's poor reputation might come from.

I personally didn't want to faff around with learning code in order to use Latex and control over where to place my figures was important to me. I was also used to Word and Excel. Lyx might have changed my view had it been available when I was writing up (it might have been, but I just didn't look for it).

Up to version 2000, it was possible if a link to an embedded figure failed it could bring down the entire file. Also up to that version, there were problems with Word files becoming unexplainably corrupted.

More recent versions (XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010) have been a lot more stable, so I wouldn't necessarily dismiss Word on the basis of past reputation. As long as you regularly back up your files so you're not recovering a week old file and have the autosave feature on so if Word or Windows goes down there's a good chance of recovery, there should not be too many problems. You might want to look at saving as '.docx' rather than '.doc' as this seems a more robust file format (unless anyone knows or has experienced different).

Horses for course I guess and the freely available OpenOffice may well have it's fans too.

Ian (Mackem_Beefy)

hi wowzers
I don't know Lyx. I was introduced to latex by a colleague. He said once you started using it, you would never go back to Word.

I decided to try LaTex, and he sent me a phd thesis template to work on. The early stage of using latex is difficult, I was struggling for some 3-4 weeks. Initially you struggle because there are new command lines to learn, and small things like fonts that will not show up in the output.

I have also received help from people on this forum (thanks Maxipat and Ailicec!).

If your thesis is mainly qualitative, it will be even smoother.

Less worry about building tables, longtables, figures, maths formulas etc.

If you can put a few weeks of time, latex is very well worth using. I would start with a phd template because everything is already mapped out for you. You don't have to build your own document from scratch!

Another reason latex works for me is that I don't see the Apple wheel of death every time I open my thesis on Latex, which I often get with Word because for some unknown reason Word on a Mac cannot handle large sized files as well as Word on a PC.

I use TeXShop. I don't know downloads for latex on windows, but there should be reliable ones on the CTAN website.

love satchi