Macros: MS Word vs. TeX & friends

Question

This is a follow-up question to How can I convert my TeX-illiterate coworkers to LaTeX?.

To better demonstrate the power of TeX & friends and dismiss the competition (e.g. MS Word, Open Office), I need to cover all the bases. In particular, I know that MS Word offers the possibility of programming macros, to automate some repetitive tasks.

I know close to nothing about Word macros and what they have to offer. Of course, I intend to do my homework and gauge their potential (or lack thereof :p ); but, for now, I'm interested in what you think.

If you are familiar with both Word macros and TeX & friends, please give me your perspective on the comparative strengths & limitations of the former, when used to typeset a document.

Answer 1

I'm not an expert on this, but here's my take:

MS Office and other Microsoft products (Internet Explorer, etc.) all expose an API for scripting. You can use this API from Office macros, written in VBA - Visual Basic for Applications, embedded into the document; or separate script files written in JScript (MS's JavaScript dialect) or VBScript. Here is a sample of what you can do.

Essentially, everything that you can do in Office by clicking around can be automated. Every button and feature has its equivalent API function. A huge advantage over (PDF)TeX is that there are "proper" programming languages at your hand, though LuaTeX also offers one. VBA is easier to learn than macro programming. On the other hand if you look around on CTAN, somebody has likely already written the stuff you need for TeX. There is no "CMSWAN" :)

I don't agree with Steven Segletes; TeX is also a bit whimsical when placing figures. Someone who uses Word's capabilities to automatically generate TOC/LOF/LOT/numbering is considered an Office wizard - maybe just as much as we are all considered TeX geeks by people around us. I do know Office wizards. I also think that browsing the docs for the Word API and browsing the LaTeX packages and their manuals to achieve what you want are equally time-consuming and equally fun tasks.

Example: I was given some hundred Word documents which composed a book. Each file corresponded to a subsection and the filename was the number of the first page of that subsection. Chapters had their own numbered folders. So if you wanted to find something, you had to open the chapter folder, open the TOC for that chapter, look up the page number for the title and open that file. So I put together a script that opens each file, reads the first paragraph which should be the title, and writes a new TOC that has the titles hyperlinked to the files.

But I've seen Excel sheets that downloaded databases, accessed web APIs, created 3D plots etc. at the click of a button, all done in tons of VBA.

Answer 2

It's a comment rather than an exact answer since marczellm 's answer has summed up well.

• To address Q in a objective way is tough: As Steven B. Segletes rightly mentioned in his comment Why would I be familiar with present Word capabilities ? that too when anyone is acquainted with TeX.SX :)

• In my view, there is no competition or comparison between "Macros in MS Word and TeX & friends" since there are different species altogether due to the fact that "TeX itself is a macro language" and macro programming is one of it's greatest strengths along with its inherent typography and much more. Not to forget that in Word document is typed not typesetted as in TeX.

• Finally to have a yardstick for macros comparison "Figure 2: Areas of concern in original article" of Frank Mittelbach TUG 2013 article may be a good start point. Some basis points may be typography/automation/trackchanges/security/macro programming easiness etc...

• It's worth reading Frank Mittelbach's "E-TeX: Guidelines for Future TEX Extensions-revisited", TUGboat, Volume 34 (2013), No. 1 to appreciate TeX as typesetting system with latest developments.

Answer 3

This is nothing to do with macros, but word's "Track changes" feature is really nice. As far as I am aware there is nothing comparable for tex, at least when you are using standard tex editors such as vim, emacs, texshop, ... - although it is possible to concoct poor relatives of word's track-changes using things like patch and git etc.

Of course the underlying "problem" is that tex works with "flat" files which don't naturally have a way of encoding the changes that are made between versions.