Is Notepad not available for you?

Use notepad and type it out in html format. Then you can pretty much organize it how ever you please. No outside programs needed.

DarkCampainger wrote:

LaTeX takes a little while to set up and learn, but it can do just about anything you could need.

LaTeX seconded (if it wasn't obvious ;p)

Another great benefit of LaTeX over Word is that it's all plaintext, which means welcome to the world of version control. Throw your design doc right in with your game's repo and you can easily update, roll back, collaborate, view changes, and more on your design doc. While Word can do some of the neat things LaTex can (math equations, for example), good luck trying to run version control on a docx.

Keep in mind, though, that the first time you use it, it may take longer to make the design document than the program you're writing it for ;)

I'll disagree a bit here, but it helps if you have a base to go off of rather than just the documentation and tutorials available online. For a design doc, there's not a whole lot you need to know. Sectioning, lists, emphasis, and you're pretty much covered. And if you don't know something, there's always Stack Overflow and Google.

Lummox has a point in saying that a design document is *not* a book and LaTeX might not be appropriate here. However, a design document is a great opportunity to learn LaTeX and once you do, you'll never go back.


Plus, isn't Computer Modern beautiful?

Lummox JR wrote:

Not a book, I said. LaTeX is meant for books (specifically, textbooks); design documents are not books.

My bad, that is how I meant to quote you. However, LaTeX is meant for much more than [text]books. It's used for academic papers (both by students and professors), for project proposals (it's used by my bosses and my team at work, as well as in classes), and for presentations. I also use it for taking notes, though I'll admit that's heading towards book-length ;p. LaTeX is for making documents of any length, and it does a pretty nice job. All the benefits might not be apparent for shorter papers, but I'll still take it over word.

Plus, the OS-independent capability is really nice, especially in the academic environment where OS market shares are much closer to being equal. I can modify my TeX file on my Windows laptop, on the Mac desktops in the science lounge, or my friend's linux box. You can't say the same for Word, and OpenOffice is probably the worst thing the open-source software movement has going for it (i.e., OO.org sucks). And really, do I have to argue the benefits of LaTeX over a plaintext notepad file?

I learned LaTeX. It sucked. I went back.

Your major gripes don't really apply in this instance, though. For a design document, the default layouts (or basic variants) will work fine, as do the default sectioning (sections, subsections, paragraphs). As far as PDF conversions, I haven't had any troubles with simply running "pdflatex myfile.tex" though I'll admit I haven't ventured too far into using multiple fonts. Either way, I'm certain that LaTeX has vastly improved since you've used it years ago.

You can do TeX to HTML, you can't do HTML to TeX. TeX is more portable.

Forum_account wrote:

Unless you're doing a lot of complex formatting it's easier to write straight HTML.

Which is entirely your opinion. Personally, I find the continuous opening and closing of tags, especially nested ones, pretty frelling annoying. Writing TeX is easier for me.

Most phones can display HTML documents but have absolutely no idea what a .tex file is.

The Amazon Kindle can't read HTML documents but can display PDFs.

Back to relevancy, TeX can be translated into HTML, PDF, Plaintext and other formats very easily. I never suggested distributing the .tex file, only the final product.

Lummox JR wrote:

Isn't the reverse actually more true? That is, with the exception of certain online-only formatting types, TeX should be able to format anything HTML can, whereas HTML's formatting capabilities are so limited that you're more likely to suffer losses in translating from TeX to HTML. Of course both conversions are lossy, because the feature set of one does not entirely encompass the other.

I'm sorry, what I meant is that there are utilities to quickly and easily convert a TeX document to an HTML format. I do not know of any utilities that do the reverse.

That said, which converts more readily to which has nothing to do with portability. Portability is about the range of systems that can read the format.

What I'm saying is that it's very easy to take a single TeX document and produce multiple formats that will read on any system (while simultaneously providing choices to the end user who's doing the reading). TeX can provide an HTML copy for those who want it, a plaintext copy, or a PDF copy. Just writing in HTML does not give you that benefit. Is TeX directly portable? No, but it easily yields several formats which are.


Either way, this is totally off-topic now.

I second google docs, since that's worked well for me in the past.