On 05/06/2010 07:28 PM, (Ted Harding) wrote:
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.
Thanks Ted. I wished that more people enjoyed learning for its own
sake, and ultimately to have more command of how something works.
Frank
--
Frank E Harrell Jr Professor and Chairman School of Medicine
Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University
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