[OS X TeX] TeX and the wild wild world out there

[Victor Ivrii]

On 11/29/06, Bruno Voisin <bvoisin at mac.com> wrote:
> An observation: I've been taking part in scientific conferences for
> some time now:
>
> - About 15 years ago, instructions for authors were provided (paper
> size, margins, presentation of title, of name and affiliation, and so
> forth), and that was it.
>
> - About 10 years ago, a LaTeX style was provided, implementing the
> instructions.
>
> - About 5 years ago, both instructions and a LaTeX style were
> provided, and in addition a Word template was also provided,
> implementing more-or-less (generally partially) what was already
> present in the LaTeX style, for those authors more accustomed to Word.
>
> - This year, for the first time I'm seeing a conference <http://
> www2.sese.uwa.edu.au/issf2006/papers/paper_submissions.html> in which
> the instructions are implemented as a carefully crafted Word style,
> with detailed instructions of use. A LaTeX style is also provided,
> for those authors more accustomed to LaTeX, but this style implements
> only partially the instructions for authors and, for those it
> implements, is largely erroneous.
>
> Thus, within a decade, it seems TeX has turned from a de-facto
> standard into an afterthought. This reminded me of the discussion we
> had some time ago here, about Word being considered more and more as
> good enough even for academic mathematical prose.


In mathematical community M$W is used as often as íslenska (Icelandic language)
>
> (The above is in no case meant as a criticism of the organizers of
> the conference: I know from experience what a frantic job the
> organization of a conference is, and it's already kind of a miracle
> when one finds the time to prepare a template for the authors,
> whatever software that is for.)

``Diligence overcomes everything!
It happens that the diligence overcomes also a common sense''
                                 Kozma Prutkov

>
> I'm not sure that anything can be done about that state of things,
> but I thought people might be interested by the observation.

In mathematics we can reject outright any documents in M$W and any
message containing M$W attachments. I also if someone presents using
M$PP and it is poorely visible (which almost  always happens),first
ask the speaker to read this part loudly, on the third instance I
leave the room


>
> Bruno Voisin
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>


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