[OS X TeX] Who should use (La)TeX - who is able to use it?

[Alain Schremmer]

Thanks for the info.
As you may have noticed, I was invited to call it quit.
So, thanks again
Regards
--schremmer

Fernando Pereira wrote:

>
> On Nov 15, 2004, at 9:52 PM, Alain Schremmer wrote:
>
>> In any case, I doubt that, 25 years ago, people could have imagined 
>> what today's desk computers can do. We were overjoyed with MacWrite 
>> and couldn't believe it when the first Laserprinter came out. In fact 
>> we couldn't believe the output of the Applewriter (?) to begin with. 
>> So, the fact that many people have tried does not seem to me to be a 
>> convincing argument.
>
>
> In the late 70s, places like Xerox PARC and other research labs had 
> very expensive custom personal computers that were functionally 
> comparable with modern Macs, if with less memory and slower. There's 
> *nothing* fundamental in a current OS X environment that is 
> qualitatively different from, say, what was available and possible on 
> a Xerox Dorado in the late 70s, or a Sun or SGI workstation in the mid 
> 80s. Slicker, yes. But all of the critical ideas and techniques, 
> including bitmapped displays, TeX, window systems, and WYSIWYG 
> editors, were already available. I know of several early attempts (for 
> example, at CMU in the mid 80s) to put WYSIWYG front-ends on 
> typesetting systems that failed not because of computer limitations 
> but for the reasons I mentioned.
>
>>
>> Re. "The syntax and meaning of typesetting languages like TeX are too 
>> rich and subtle for simple-to-use visual metaphors". Maybe, I 
>> certainly wouldn't know, but what about a /subset/ thereof? Many 
>> people would be happy to settle for a "lite" version. If only to get 
>> started.
>
>
> Subsetting a language is very hard if the language was not designed to 
> be subsetted. That's why it's so hard to teach introductory 
> programming with professional programming languages like C++ or Java.
>
>>
>> By the way, just before the Mac came out, I used to hear the same 
>> kind of things about why there could be nothing but command language 
>> on 80 character lines and raw dot matrix printers. I know because a 
>> friend and I were trying at the time to get into small press 
>> publishing, couldn't believe it and kept looking. And then there was 
>> Xerox' star system which we couldn't afford and, eventually, the Mac 
>> 128 which couldn't do much of anything but made us wait a bit more 
>> and the Mac 256 we bought a couple of.
>
>
> That might have been the case for the general public, but those of us 
> who had the luck to use early Xerox D machines, MIT Lisp machines, and 
> Sun and SGI workstations as part of our work around that time had a 
> totally different experience.
>
> -- F
>
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--------------------- Info ---------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
           & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>