[OS X TeX] Macintouch report on TeX versus Word

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On mercredi 21 janv. 09, at 12:20, David Derbes wrote:

> My guess is that down the road we'll have an even more user-friendly  
> version of LaTeX than we have now.

Don't forget about initiatives like LyX and also about the fact that  
there are people who work on ODF <-> LaTeX bridges.

> Perhaps stupidly I believe that LaTeX is so superior that it too  
> will be here indefinitely,

Although it looks a little bit weird to people who have never done any  
markup by hand, any one who has typed a few HTML tags (and that is  
potentially a huge lot if you consider that all the bloggers around  
have access to the HTML representation of their articles) can  
comfortably use LateX for trivial to moderately complex jobs.

I feel though that the mystery that surrounds TeX based processes  
comes from the fact that even though everybody now is accustomed to  
the "structure file + style sheet" of (ht|x)ml, TeX related  
documentation still reads like such concepts are _soo_ inovative and  
beyond what anybody can conceive. The systematic comparision between  
TeX processes and "WYSYWYG" crap is getting seriously old.

I think a different approach is needed, something like TeX processes  
are for the print world what XML is for the data/web world. Then "new"  
people will start to get hooked.





Jean-Christophe Helary

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