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

[Paul Vickers]

Not sure 'acceptable' and 'ugly as hell' fit together.... I just  
assessed a PhD thesis which had lots of fairly simple maths in it --  
mostly set theory type stuff, very few subscripts, no fractions,  
integrals, roots etc. Because the thesis was prepared in Word the  
maths was, as you say, ugly as hell; however, to my eyes that makes  
it unacceptable as it's actually very hard to read. It's a BIT LIKE  
WRITING ALL YOUR THESIS BODY TEXT IN MONOSPACED CAPS.

I went to a workshop in August the proceedings of which appeared in  
Springer's LNCS series. Consequently we authors had a choice of Word  
or LaTeX templates (provided by Springer). It's interesting to leaf  
through the finished volume as there is a marked aesthetic difference  
between the Word-produced and the LaTeX-produced chapters. I know  
which I think are easier on the eye.

Paul

Paul
On 29 Nov 2006, at 10:56, Anthony Morton wrote:

>
>> 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.
>
> All that's happened is that Word has evolved to where it can  
> produce acceptable math typesetting.  It's still ugly as hell but  
> at least it's legible.  As a result many people, who would  
> previously have taken on the LaTeX learning curve because there was  
> no alternative if they needed their papers to be readable, no  
> longer see the need.  Nothing on the LaTeX side has changed, it's  
> just that there's now a passable alternative for those who don't  
> care to learn it.
>
> This emphasises the need for a foolproof LaTeX distribution that  
> anyone with half a brain can install and learn the basics of.
>
> Tony M.
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