On 06-May-10 23:44:50, Frank E Harrell Jr wrote: > Ted I can't resist offering my $.02, which is that I'm puzzled why > LaTeX, being free, flexible, and powerful, is used only by millions of > people and not tens of millions. > > Frank
I think, Frank, that it's because when you use software like LaTex, unless you have a resource like Sweave (or Lyx) which does a lot of the hard work for you, you cannot avoid learning to use the reins and spurs properly to control the beast. It is the analogy of people who are happy to be helped onto a donkey at the seaside, and enjoy a gentle comfortable donkey-ride along the shore with the donkey in control (in turn led by the donkey-master), as opposed to those who might try mounting on a racehorse and seeing how they get along on their own! And there is always the reason that Certain Other Software (COS) is adopted as the Industry Standard (© & ®) for editable document interchange. (PDF has become more prominent, and is now ackowledged as a production format by COS, but for most people it's not editable when sent to them by others; and PS has never been popular on that front -- attempts to open a PS document in Word usually lead to disaster: I've known it to be done). That said, I am totally in agreement with you! (with a $0.02 for my own preferences in that area, to which the same considerations apply). Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 07-May-10 Time: 01:28:26 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
