On 2007-10-05 15:03, Frank Jahnke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >On Fri, 2007-10-05 at 23:34 +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> I am always a bit surprised that TeX was released in 78 (before my >> birth!) and---despite its algorithms are published---its output >> quality remains unmatched [1] by common programs. Why these programs >> do not apply TeX's strategies to solve their problems? This makes me >> wonder. > > This is a good question. TeX didn't really hit its stride until about > 1989 (with Metafont and the language freeze), and the effort learned a > lot from troff. Nevertheless, I am always struck by how ugly is the > type that Word produces. You can always tell. I've read about how > sophisticated its algorithm for this or that is, but the end result is > terribly inferior to both troff and TeX. > > I don't really know why -- and it extends beyond the hyphenation > algorithm to things like inter-word kerning and type face formation -- > but I just don't like the way Word documents look. Maybe one of these > days I'll look into it. I also find the insistence of the TeX > community to use the dreadful CM font family to be misguided. There's > a reason that the classical fonts are classics.
As far as journals are concerned, I think the insistence about CM fonts is usually an attempt to "keep the original style of the journal", and not so much a lack of respect for the beauty of classic font families. Since the first releases of TeX, there have been many interesting developments about font-handling in the TeX world, like the typeface definitions of ConTeXt, and the drop-in packages of LaTeX which allow one to use Palatino, Helvetica, and other classic fonts. This is getting off-topic for the original topic, but I learnt something new (about the LyX wiki), so -- at least for me -- it was worth it :) Giorgos _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
