Problem

I tried editing in M$ Word, but failed.

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Solution

The solution is extremely simple: don’t use M$ Office if it’s too heavy for your computer — use something more lightweight: a text editor with a typesetting engine.

Choose your favourite editors

I use Vim every day as a text editor. I tried EMACS. Though I can’t remember two sets of keystrokes, the latter is still useful when you need to browse info pages on *nix.

Typesetting engines

1. Markdown and pandoc

   For simple documents which have little variation in styles, such as blog entries and some homework essays.

2. $\rm \LaTeX$

   For more complicated documents like lab report, documents containing math expressions, etc.