On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 06:42:42PM -0400, Alan Munn wrote: > > On Sep 29, 2010, at 5:59 PM, Peter Dyballa wrote: > > > > >Am 29.09.2010 um 23:40 schrieb Philipp Stephani: > > > >>reality is approximately as follows: Users who read beginner > >>documents such as lshort don't want to use TeX, but are forced > >>to do so by their advisor. They don't want to read discussions > >>about the pros and cons of various text editors or why Microsoft > >>is evil. Beginners usually know how to visit web sites and how > >>to create simple documents in Microsoft Word (perhaps in three > >>years from now they might not know about the latter, simply > >>because they don't need it). Not a bit more. They don't know > >>what a text file or a text editor is, they have never heard the > >>word "Unicode", and they have never used a programming language > >>before. What they need are step-by-step instructions that tell > >>them, in simple words, how to create TeX documents. > > > >This *might* have been the situation in the so-called first or > >industrialised world 20 years ago. > > > No, in fact this is very accurate (except maybe the part about being > forced by advisors). How often do you actually interact with > undergraduate (or even graduate students) Pete? My experience is > that they're really good at updating their Facebook status, but > things deteriorate quickly from there, exactly as Philipp describes. > And I deal with a broad range of students at a major US research > university.
Well, I myself graduated last month, so... -- Khaled Hosny Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team Free font developer -------------------------------------------------- Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
