[OS X TeX] FAQ or Archive

[Alain Schremmer]

I don't think it is a "small point" but I don't think it is a matter of 
"laziness" but, rather, one of inhibition.
Lacking familiarity with the medium, I have no suggestion as to what is 
to be done. At this point, I wouldn't even venture a comment. I will 
only say that it would be nice if something were done to alleviate as 
much as possible the troubles beginners have.
Indeed:
(1) As I have written a few weeks ago, a lot of people will NEED to use 
LaTeX.
(2) As someone used to having to deal with so-called math-anxiety (no 
such thing of course, just plain anxiety, mostly caused by 
authoritarian show and tell and drill), I know the extent to which much 
anxiety will hinder learning.
(3) I can personally testify to the above. For instance, I never 
thought, until told, that I could look for packages on Google.

And for instance, from my corner, how do you persuade a woman that, 
yes, she can (re)create what she needs in mathematics rather than to 
rely on being "shown how to do it" when she has been told all her life 
that etc etc.?
Most of the time, she will not see the "obvious" way out of a 
difficulty because she will have already decided that she is 
overwhelmed.
Of course, this also applies to men but, in their case, the 
conditioning indoctrination is less blatant.

Regards
--schremmer



On Jul 15, 2004, at 2:57 PM, Samuel Lelievre wrote:

>
> A very small point about the list footer:
>
> The recently posted request for an eye-catching "FAQ"
> mention in the list footer might simply mean that the
> current footer is not eye-catching enough --- perhaps
> because one can be too lazy to read a sentence in the
> list footer.
>
> Thus the footer might even be made that short:
>
> ---------- TeX on Mac OS X Mailing List ----------
> Web page: <http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/>
> Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>
>
>
> The idea being, anything related to the list that one
> could think about (FAQ, archive, guidelines or else),
> would naturally be looked for on the list's web page.
>
> The mention "Web page" is short enough and the list's
> name just above encourages associations of ideas such
> as the ones I suggest my previous sentence.
>
> Would anyone comment on whether this would be more of
> an incitation to go check whether the list's web page
> contains some FAQ?
>
> Anyway, just my grain of salt. SL
>
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>

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