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

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On 29-Nov-2006, at 12:21, Alain Schremmer wrote:
> Paul Vickers wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Yes, and let's not accept, say, what the next Grothendieck/Perelman  
> write because she doesn't want to take away any time from her  
> mathematical work to learn the beautiful LaTeX. Hey, if she wants  
> me to read her, she better accomodate my eyes and kiss my feet too.

I'm not sure this is fair.  If it is difficult to read because the  
presentation is poor, then that is a valid issue.  If you have to  
work around the formatting to try to decipher what is being presented  
then the poor presentation is an issue.

Most books are laid out pretty well and use decent fonts.  Every now  
and again I run across one that is not, and I have set aside books  
because the formatting and layout were poor enough it made reading it  
more of a chore than I was willing to submit to.

And this happens a LOT with pdfs.  I had one recently where the  
'page' was 8.5x11 and the text on each page was taking up about 60%  
of the page, moved up and left.  It was so difficult to read, I  
simply deleted the pdf (it was also a IMAGE pdf, instead of text, so  
no way to 'fix').


-- 
"Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side?  And hain't that a  
big enough majority in any town?"  - Huckleberry Finn


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