From: r3btg@vax1.cc.uakron.edu (Ben T Galehouse)
Subject: Re: Misc LaTex problems (was: numbering from 1 with titlepage)
Summary: My reply to the LaTeX advocate
Organization: The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 05:00:31 GMT

In article <CARLISLE.92Dec11114219@r8d.cs.man.ac.uk> carlisle@cs.man.ac.uk (David Carlisle) writes:
>>>>>> On 10 Dec 92 01:04:00 GMT, asnd@reg.triumf.ca (Donald Arseneau) said:
>....
>Donald> In fact LaTeX is not usually used this way.  Once you are writing your
>Donald> own macros it is easier to NOT use LaTeX. 
>
>It may be easier to avoid LaTeX, but doing it in LaTeX is worth the
>trouble.

Why? so that other people can use it easily?  I think that the poster
had said specificaly.  ``Once you are writting your own macros...''

>
>
>If I were to write a bunch of macros sitting on top of plain TeX,
>there would be no guidelines at all for interacting with other
>packages, or the `look and feel' of the user interface level. In order
>to write a LaTeX style file, I may have to re-write large chunks of
>latex internals, but if I manage to get the whole works to come out
>with a latex look-and-feel, it is much easier for latex users to use
>(given that they wont read the documentation!) and there is at least a
>chance that it will work with other packages written by other authors.

I prefer my own macro's look and feel for the sole reason that they are
my own macros.  If you whant to do the world a favor by giving people
consistant, easy-to-use macros, that it fine.  The original poster,
however, didn't imply that he wanted to have macros that acted like
standardized macros.  He implied that he was having trouble making
macros do things {\sl his} way.  I created a small preamble file for
Plain TeX that allows me to create english papers the way I (and the
instructor) want them to look (the pagenumber in the upper left hand
corner, etc)  It isn't more than two screens worth.  I admit that I
spent some time figuring out how to do it.  But it probably didn't take
much longer than it would have to read doc file on a sty file and figure
out how to make it do what I needed. Also, I restricted my font selection
so much that I could TeX it and Print it off of a single high-density
floppy.  Will anybody else ever see and use my TeX files? I doubt it.
I don't think of my style of programing as being so wonderfull that
everybody wants to use it.  Also, I have done nothing that isn't
documented in the TeXbook or that would require a significant amount of
work to duplicate.

This, more than anything else, at least in my opinion, is where your
argument breaks down.
>
>LaTeX is not TeX-made-easy it is TeX-at-a-higher-level. 
>Writing higher level constructs is likely to be hard, it is using them
>that is supposed to be easy(er)

If you have written the constructs yourself, for your own purposes,
then using them is always easy.  (or always difficult, depending upon
your programming experience and what you are trying to do)  I don't
think that the original poster was complaining about writing macros for
public use.

Finaly, even if the macros are for public use, why do they need to conform
to one ``all-encompasing'' stanard?  Even if you want to use a standard feel,
that is fine, but why not use Knuth's as opposed to people who came
later's.  Also, it is my opinion and general finding, that the most powerful
programs have a style, a feel, all their own.  I think that style
conformance is a limitation to the power of a program.  I'll admit that
some will disagree, but I also suspect that some will agree.

Ben Galehouse (I don't need to tell you what I use :-> 

-- 
r3btg@vax1.cc.uakron.edu          15764 Galehouse Rd.
Ben Galehouse              Doylestown, OH, 44230
(216) 658-3556           
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex