It is somewhat unclear what OP fully requires for his book, and since I dropped Word decades ago, I cannot fully judge what it can do today, if it can ākeep paceā with LaTeX, which I strongly doubt. Once you learn a pro tool, you never look back, just the same way Iād never start Sibelius again, after using Dorico. You could do fine with Sibelius, but itās not Dorico.[1] Same goes for Word IMO. If the OP wants a publication with a premium look, Word is not the tool IMO.
I tried the āvertical flushā in Word (not something OP would probably use since his text might be too āfragmentedā) and got
I think no further comments are needed.
You would have to force TeX pretty hard to get this output. I bet most of us would never accept a music page that looked like this. I recall a discussion about āwhat to do with the last page when there is not enough musicā some time ago.
From the OPās sample, he might need an example counter, and one that is configurable. Iām not sure it can be done in Word. It can probably number tables and figures, but can it number āanythingā? (There was a similar discussion for Dorico some time ago, with a user wanting to do exercises and restart the counter at each flow. Iām not sure it was solvable. But, Dorico is not set out to be a complete book program either.)
We should probably learn more about the publication requirements before deciding what deal breakers might exist in various software.
This question comes up from time to time, and perhaps there is a survey article at Notation Central or other āreview sitesā that could be of interest to the OP. It would require a broad knowledge of many tools, and Iām not sure such a person exists.
Iāve never cared much about colour profiles, but I donāt do coffee table books or Vogue art magazines. In my younger days, it was all the hype of CMYK, CMS, and RGB (and which one of themā¦). Modern printers seem to handle it all flawlessly today, at least for modest demand on the publication.
[1] I had to open an older Sibelius document today to look at an old score, and what I thought was fine then. I didnāt like it at all today, being used to the superior output and layout of Dorico.