I do not know if I'm being too obsessive in the search for the best options for everything I do. Maybe I'm trying to make some aspect of my life, but in the end. During the study of expertise to look for tools that facilitate our work, and in particular I found three that seem to give me results. Have in common that they are a nuisance to learn, but eventually make it much easier work, so I share them to see if anyone is served.
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Ortoll recharging Servando saw a fountain pen and asked him why he bothered to use something as annoying and archaic. He replied that he had several advantages, such as choosing the type of ink and less pressure to write. As he convinced me to keep a field journal on paper, sometimes I have to write dozens of pages and a traditional pen my left hand ended discarded.
So after reading forums and I decided to try. I looked for the best brands and my disappointment was huge to see that the best feathers hundred fifty dollars down, reaching up to five or more. So I went to Office Depot and bought a hundred dollars to see if I liked the experience or not.
I soon realized the benefits: Indeed, the pressure required for writing is tiny. This makes writing much less tired. On the other hand, he brought that pen ink was not too good, but it was certainly much better than any pen I had. Another advantage is, of course, one can choose the type of ink and color, and here the options are almost endless. While the pens are usually found in black, blue, red and green, to find other colors is quite unusual and is usually of poor quality ink. The pens purple, yellow or brown that I used did not leave me very happy. Moreover, the feathers can be found in many different thicknesses, from points extra fine to very coarse own handwriting. The point is that the options are.
So now I bought a Lamy Safari twenty-five dollars, fine point, to complement the already had. Sure, it's the time to learn to use it, not get dirty and keep it clean. But eventually it seems that pays.
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If you have to prepare academic papers, they know the long time that you invest in citing references properly and put all the standards of one of the most used. In the faculty of human sciences ask us much the APA, most historians use the system in Chicago and others could use the Harvard. There are other systems engineering and mathematics and others. But basically the goal is the same: Identify our sources and make comments on the text.
manually do that in programs like Word is pure torture. Even the Word has an option to quote correctly on many systems. I started using it and found it quite useful, until I realized you do not easily export sources and, finally, is a closed system and very limited. But, please, what else could you expect from Microsoft?
There
specialized software which provides a huge collection of fonts available in the literature and integrate with Word and OpenOffice. Allow us to organize our sources and quote them easily whenever you need them. One such program is Zotero, EndNote, and others.
But Eduardo Cerda recommended me one that I've been using and it's free. It also has a version for Linux, what convinced me to install.
is a very good software that allows us to not only organize our sources also support them on your server and upload a maximum of 500 megs PDFs for free online and share them with the world. It is also an academic network where you share their own stories and connect with others working the same subjects. Has the potential to be an excellent and almost indispensable.
However, some details need to be polished. It is very difficult to create a bibliographic style itself. I recently made a submission in which required a very concrete way to present the literature and Mendeley could not help me to do it, I had to manually change which was a real disappointment. Moreover, the choice to watch folders sometimes gives me duplicate documents as need to change the whole style of a document can not be done easily. Still, it is well under way.
If you want to write essays seriously, or are thinking
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Speaking of Word, how much time they spend in formatting their documents? I'm pretty sure he spent more time formatting the document content. This should not be so, word processors should only let us concentrate on the content of what we write, the formatting is a further step that should be trivial.
WYSYWIG Publishers invented so there was no discrepancy between what we see on the screen and what appears on the printer. At first they were an excellent idea, but over time have been overloaded with options. On the other hand, handle the formats of programs like Word is a constant battle between the program guess what I do, and does so without my permission. How long struggled not undo the "suggestions" in Word? When we change the lowercase to uppercase, or bleeding puts us where we do not want, or start a numbered list when it is not our intention. Or if you started a bulleted list and not the distance that we want. That kind of stuff we take the life out of hand.
is why, tired of Word (and OpenOffice for all this), I decided to look for alternatives and came to LaTeX. It is a language that allows us to write first and format later. It is mainly used in academic texts in areas such as physics, mathematics and engineering, but can serve anyone. It is similar to HTML and can write in a notebook.
However, after struggling a bit with the language and search the Internet, I became an editor for LaTeX WYSYWIG called LyX. The truth greatly facilitates learning. This may seem counterintuitive, since precisely these kinds of publishers'm running. Still, in this case has really helped me. LyX is not as easy to learn, but as I say, in the long run saves a lot of time: One focuses on writing, and eventually generates a PDF with the features you need. Normally they look much, much more elegant than a Word document (buaj!) And its look is unmistakable.
LaTeX is so good that even complete books and theses are with him and pass any another format is trivial. In addition, each document is saved, and opened in any other computer (anyone!) Or a single letter instead moves. Try it con Word.
Me voy a dormir.
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