[OS X TeX] Re: Macintouch report on TeX versus Word

[Jens Noeckel]

On Jan 23, 2009, at 5:41 PM, David B. Thompson, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE,  
CFM wrote:

>
> On Jan 23, 2009, at 15:20, david craig wrote:
>
>> Second, to me one of the principal virtues of TeX is that I expect  
>> my tex files to be as comprehensible 100 years from now as they  
>> are today. I sincerely doubt that can be said of (*shudder*) Word  
>> documents, or even pdf.
>>
>> Vive la plain text!
>
>
> I hadn't really forgotten this point. But, now that it's raised it  
> is a principal reason I think plain text is a superior storage form  
> for anything, data or source. I have some analyses (and data) in  
> old Quatro Pro worksheets that I now have no idea how to access if  
> I need them. For this reason, my colleagues and are have our  
> rainfall-runoff database stored as a set of plain text files. I now  
> use R scripts (in plain text) for most of my analyses.
>
> I am confident the sources and the data will be available to me  
> later, even if I change computer systems entirely.
>
> Good point.
>

Did you really mean plain text or plain TeX above?

As the following YouTube video illustrates, this discussion may not  
yet be the last word on what the future will bring...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpeqPdVyQd0

Jens