Many commentators, Irreal included, are fond of pointing out that even if you need to deliver your writing product in some sort of Word compatible format, you can still write in the comfort of Emacs and Org mode. All you need do is export your Org document as an ODT document. That sounds pretty simple but, of course, there are some annoying details to navigate.
Peter Prevos, proprietor of the excellent Emacs Writing Studio, has a very nice video that steps you through the process and covers all the bothersome details. Prevos starts with a sample Org file that contains a bit of mathematics, some citations, some tables, some figures, and various headings. The final goal is to produce a DocX document.
Getting to DocX is a two step process. First you have to produce an ODT document and then use something like LibreOffice to convert that to DocX. That’s not too onerous but there are lots of pesky details.
First, dealing with mathematics is hard because ODT doesn’t deal with the LaTeX markup so you have to either turn it into a png or convert it to math ML so ODT can deal with it. It’s a pain but neither option is too hard to actually do.
A similar thing happens with citations. If you’re exporting to, say, HTML or PDF, everything happens automatically but, of course, the Word sphere is different. Again, it’s not that hard to get it to work but it’s just another detail that’s hard to discover.
Finally, Prevos reminded me about his Emacs Writing Studio book. I’ve been meaning to get it for some time so I downloaded it from LeanPub. I’ve bought several books from LeanPub and have been very happy with them. Updates are free and they send you a notice when they become available. If you don’t want to use LeanPub, you can find links to various ways of ordering the book on the Emacs Writing Studio Website.
If you’re one of the poor souls who wants to write in Emacs but has to deliver a Word product, take a look at Prevos’ videos for some valuable hints.