Nice to have you posting here, Simon. That's pretty cool that you're able to integrate an interest in typography into your dissertation.

For professional layout, the standard is Adobe InDesign (now in version CS3), which gives you far more flexibility than MS Word ever could. Here's a short post that goes over a few reasons why InDesign's better. After you learn it, I doubt you'll be able to even imagine laying out something like a dissertation in Word, especially when it comes to typographic refinement. Plus, InDesign comes with a bevy of high-quality fonts perfect for a dissertation without having to spring for those, too.

People also use Quark, although the numbers are, as far as I know, going down each year. I haven't used it so I can't really comment, but most people I know choose InDesign when they can.

The bad news -- both of these are quite expensive. Two pieces of good news, however: 1) You're a student, which means you may be eligible for student discounts on software and other goodies. As a student myself, I use studica.com, where I could get InDesign CS3 for $200 (U.S.) instead of $699 from Adobe. It looks like they sell in Europe as well, but you should check -- there are several of these academic resellers around, so choose whichever seems best to you. 2) You can download the InDesign CS3 trial to use free in all its glory for 30 days here. If after experimenting you think it's worth it (and you should if you pick up a book from the library or buy one about how to use it), then you can buy the program.

Addressing your other two requirements, InDesign is available for Windows and can export its files to RTF (under File>Export...), which Word can read and print. You can also easily import Word files (File>Place), if that makes a difference.

Welcome, Simon. I’m something of a newcomer here myself, tho’ I’ve been quickly giving the place a workout and I can tell you, hands down, that this may be very nearly the most helpful group of people I’ve ever encountered on a forum.

Okay, that said, get away from MS Word and Open Office—perfectly good tools for what their purpose is, but not page layout software. (I often liken doing book design and layout in Word to whacking a nail into a wall with the flat side of a heavy wrench. Eventually you will pound that nail in, I suppose, but it’s not the tool made for the job and you might have unintended results along the way that cost you more time and money overall.)

Although I keep hearing how InDesign is rapidly replacing Quark, the lion’s share of the books I get from publishers and book packagers are to be done in Quark, now up to version 7.3, I believe. But I am also beginning to get requests for InDesign. I’m still a little more used to Quark, but InDesign—although CS3 is available, I’ve yet to make the move from CS2, which suits me fine yet—is a great program, easy to learn (if you apply yourself and put in the time), and seems particularly familiar to anyone who used PageMaker previously.

I second the notion that it’s a good deal to have the opportunity to indulge an interest in typography into the work of getting out your dissertaion.

Good luck with it.

Stephen Tiano
Book Designer, Page Compositor & Layout Artist

Besides kick-ass commercial tools mentioned above there's a cheap one called Scribus, which I think should be fine for you and won't cost a penny.

Thank you all for your input. So I've learnt newbie lesson #1: word processing and layout/design are two different things. Since I won't be using any fancy layout functions (saying my school is conservative in its requirements would be an understatement), I guess I'll stick to word processors, and perhaps deal with another piece of software when it comes to printing the physical copies... if I'm not in a rush to meet deadlines.

What actually had me wondering about the adequacy of word processors was their incomplete support of, for instance, small caps or non-lining numerals. But spending days or weeks learning a whole new program, for a result probably too small to even be noticed by the professors? Nah.

Still, I've bookmarked Scribus and will remember InDesign as the way to go once I'm rolling in dough... 200 dollars is about what I spend in food every month, so buying even a discount copy of a professional application isn't an option. And stealing is, well, wrong. Thanks again!

And of course, if you have loads of time and like tweaking everything yourself, there's always LaTEX.

You might want to consider XeLaTeX from SIL, which has OpenType support.

Isn't XeTeX built upon Mac OS X's built-in OT support and in consequence isn't it Mac only?

Not anymore. You can also get it for Linux and Windows. Windows binaries are available through the latest Miktex beta (http://miktex.org/2.7/Setup.aspx) or through the W32TeX distribution (http://www.fsci.****.kindai.ac.jp/kakuto/win32-ptex/web2c75-e.html).

From reading this page (http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Mark_IV) it sounds like ConTeXt with Mark IV may be an alternative OpenType-aware TeX derivative.