From: keith@ksmith.uucp (Keith Smith)
Subject: Re: Linux - the future?
Organization: Keith's Computer, Hope Mills, NC
Date: Sat, 07 Nov 92 19:29:48 GMT

In article <Bx7pDp.5E9@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> jjlawren@garfield.uwaterloo.ca writes:
>
>This reminds me of the typical: "Mine program is better than yours, because!"
>
>;-)
>
>Actually I have found in my (limited) experience that TeX is a very powerful and
>predictable package.  With that power comes a fairly steep learning curve!  This
>is where you would loose many of the casual users (ie/ the person writing a memo
>or two durning the day) but people in more sizable projects such as writing a
>book would find TeX (and macro packages) very appropriate....it is contextual, eh?

Hmm, think you need to use it on your postings and tell it some
people only have 80 columns on their screens ...

>
>You will find certain Secretaries using TeX on a variety of platforms because that
>is what is needed for their position...TeX is the most logical (IMHO!) way to
>typeset mathematics....just grab a math tex, you'll see that a significant number
>of them are typeset with TeX.

Hmm,  I know a *LOT* of secretaries.  Not one of which has ever even
*THOUGHT* of doing any mathmatics typesetting.  I will grant you that
TeX is a powerful typesetting "language" and appropriate for publishing,
but most of the folks out there with a computer don't need to do
typesetting, and just want to produce a letter, or small document with a
few simple features, like bold, underline, italics, adjustable margins
and the like.  Sure you can do it with roff or TeX, but there are folks
over in DOSland who have made a hell of a lot of money writing simple to
use Word Processors for it.

>
>If one is writing a 'straightforward' document then it could really be a judgement
>call as to which is better....and WYSIWYG?  Well, I think that we demand it too

Who's "we" I could care less.  I use EMACS.  However the people I do
work for.  (LOT's of people) demand it.  Techie types who've never been
in an office where real work is being done tend to lose perspective.  I
don't mean niche work either.  Visit 5 lawyers offices, and 5
accountants office at random in your area, and see what they are using
for Word Processing.  Wanna take any wagers you won't find *ANY* that
are using roff or Tex?  (Yea, I'm sure there are exceptions, but I'll
make the bet with anyone willing to roll the dice with the yellow pages.)

>much and can be a bit on the distracting side....
>
>Anyway, TeX, and LaTeX, etc, and be really quite easy to use if you have some basic
>actions set up to make the dvi, xdvi, and print it out...this could simply be
>placed in a simple menu of some sort...voila...instant text processor...sort of...

Yea, right.

>
>Hopefully there will be a number of choices...I'll take LaTeX, thanks, but you
>may wish to have a WYSIWYG system...fine!  I hope it can be offered!  It might
>be neat quick notes, eh?

EXACTLY!  quick & dirty.  That's what the computer *USERS* want.  They
don't want to deal with the complexities of roff or TeX.  Again, for me
I could care less.  TeX, roff, or even Postscript is fine.  I don't mind
hitting a book and looking up what I want to do,  My clients on the
otherhand (who outnumber me by a large margin) mind.
-- 
Keith Smith          uunet!ksmith!keith            5719 Archer Rd.
Digital Designs      BBS 1-919-423-4216            Hope Mills, NC 28348-2201
Somewhere in the Styx of North Carolina ...