From: rick@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu (Richard M. Warner)
Subject: Re: TeX an archaic religion?
Organization: San Jose State University, Math & CS
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 16:32:31 GMT

In article <Zsd-j5B@engin.umich.edu> spexet@engin.umich.edu (Dennis Robert Spexet) writes:
>From: spexet@engin.umich.edu (Dennis Robert Spexet)
>Subject: TeX an archaic religion?
>Date: 18 Aug 92 10:12:14 GMT
>In article <1992Aug17.162631.26015@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu> rick@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu (Richard Warner) writes:
>>   For Mathematical typesetting, Framemaker is current technology,
>>   TeX is an archaic 'religion' whose mantra of 'only/best mathematical
>>   typesetting system' no longer rings true.
>
>Maybe it "no longer rings true" at your site, but it sure as hell seems to
>at this site, and at the other sites I've been at.  The situation may be dif-
>ferent for scientists and engineers.  For mathematicians, however, the stan-
>dard appears to be TeX, whether you like it or not.  As for the "current tech-
>nology", I don't see the AMS (and the math journals) telling mathematicians
>to submit their papers in Frame format.  I *do*, however, see them telling
>people to submit AMS-TeX documents.
>
>Now, it would certainly be nice if everyone ran Framemaker, because it's a
>damn nice program.  However, to say that TeX is merely a "religion" is simply
>not the case.
>
>-- 
>D. Robert Spexet II, N0OKR   Internet:  spexet@math.lsa.umich.edu
>Department of Mathematics    BITnet:    user68xr@umichum.bitnet
>The University of Michigan   UUCP:      uunet!mailrus!math.lsa.umich.edu!spexet
>Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109

TeX is a religion in the sense that TeX users, like yourself, keep chanting
the mantra that it is the only way to get the output you want/desire.
That is manure.  Many word-processors and page-layout programs can
provide equivalent or better output than TeX.  

TeX has two advantages in the mathematical world.  Historical inertia
and the fact that some key publications will only accept TeX files.
Those are the ONLY advantages of TeX.  One of these days the second
advantage will weaken and that will soften the first.

This is completely analagous to the situation I faced when working with
clients in the pharmaceutical industry.  All of their reports were
prepared using script languages and formatters on mainframes.  Why
not a PC-based word-processor, I asked.  Heretic, I was labelled.  The
'reason' was that word-processors could not do the things they needed -
embedded tables and figures (the latter could not be done in the
script languages, either), could not generate tables of contents,
could not create lists of figures, etc.  I showed them the fallacy of
these arguments.  Then I was told, in rather inpolite terms, that they
used the script languages because that was how they had always done it
(right! sure! maybe for the last 5-10 years, but that was enough of
a history for them).  So what happenned?  About 4-5 years ago there
was a rapid shift to word-processing packages.  The changeover was very
rapid once the initial historical inertia was overcome.  In a 2 year
period there was a change from almost no word-processors to almost 100%
word-processor (almost exclusively WordPerfect, BTW - the only one that
will run on all those VAXes the big pharmaceutical companies have).

Again, the mantra that TeX is the best/only way is not true.  The truth
is that it is the way people are doing it, so folks will continue to
do it that way (for a while).