[OS X TeX] Keeping this list healthy

[Victor Ivrii]

On 12/2/06, Simon Spiegel <simon at simifilm.ch> wrote:

> >
> > I must disagree that it is immaterial that M$W is taking over TeX in
> > adjacent disciplines. Note that it took over practically all
> > wordprocessors including those vastly superior to it. Where is Word
> > Perfect? Nisus and Mellel I suspect are completely out of any hope to
> > expand their base (I must admit Paragon was the maker of its current
> > misery) .
>
> I don't completely agree. Of course, Word is dominating, but there
> definitely is a market for alternatives. I'm in humanities and people
> regularly ask me what they should use for their theses because
> they're fed up with Word. Depending on their needs and skills I
> recommend either Mellel or LaTeX. So far, none of them has regretted
> the switch. The problem is really one of education/knowledge. People
> simply don't know that (better?) alternatives exist. Actually, I'm
> slightly optimistic that using alternative wps will be easier in the
> feature. With MS's move towards a semi-open XML-based file format,
> one of the main reasons for using Word is – at least potentially – gone.

And why people don't know better? Because in any new Mac there is a
trialware Office but I do not remember any other trialware except of
Apple's own. Because time to time ugly dinosaurs (M$O commercials)
occupy every newspaper and every wall in subway cars...

Finally, these people copuld be very pleased with Mellel, but what
happens when they need to exchange files with someone else, and pdf by
some reasons would not be possible?

M$ moving to open standards? Like it did  with html and javascript and
java and then invented its own versions of them?

And BTW if M$ creates an export to  LaTeX or its own LaTeX, could you
imagine the ocean of ugliest possible codes filling the environment.
First we will lough but then we notice that graduate students take
them as samples :-)

>
> simon
> --
> Simon Spiegel



-- 
========================
Victor Ivrii, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
http://www.math.toronto.edu/ivrii
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