On 9/29/2010 8:39 PM, Andy Lin wrote:
lshort needs to be updated, not just because it's missing sections on
Unicode and XeTeX. It's also working under the assumption that people
will *need* to use the command line in order to process a document.
This should be a concern to anyone who's looked at it recently.
I hesitate to jump in, but I think it's worth thinking about (and
perhaps saying, in this lshort document) why someone would want to use a
TeX-type program, as opposed to MsWord or some such. I'm not convinced
it's the right solution for everyone. If all you're doing is writing a
five page homework paper, for example, do you really need to typeset it?
By the time the prof marks it up for content (and maybe spelling), any
typography is going to be obscured by the red ink.
Dissertations are, I think, different; but very few people wind up
writing dissertations.
My own reason for getting into XeLaTeX is that we write multi-lingual
grammars, the second of which was Urdu. Trying to produce decent
looking Urdu text is a stretch for anyone who isn't a calligrapher, so I
think we had a good case for using XeLaTeX for typesetting. (Probably
the only other possibility would have been the Middle East version of
InDesign.)
I suppose some people use *TeX because they like programming approaches
to things. (However, I've programmed in at least a dozen programming
languages, and there are still design choices in *TeX that I scratch my
head over. But yes, Donald Knuth is much smarter than I am, so I'm sure
there's a reason.) Maybe a few people use it to produce greeting cards
or wedding invitations or something. Mathematicians too, maybe, but
there aren't many of them around.
So: Who is the audience? And who among the not-already-converted ought
to be proselytized?
--
Mike Maxwell
maxw...@umiacs.umd.edu
"A library is the best possible imitation, by human beings,
of a divine mind, where the whole universe is viewed and
understood at the same time... we have invented libraries
because we know that we do not have divine powers, but we
try to do our best to imitate them." --Umberto Eco
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