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From: charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: a word-processor for UNIX
Message-ID: <1638@uw-entropy.ms.washington.edu>
Date: 21 Jul 89 20:46:26 GMT
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In article <8467@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> lacey@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu 
(John Lacey) writes:

> Who wins?  In terms of popularity in the marketplace, the ease of
> use wins big.  Even within language-based systems, note the
> popularity LaTeX enjoys over TeX.

But this isn't quite the same as WYSIWYG vs. language-based.  LaTeX is
TeX.  A TeX expert can get LaTeX to do almost anything TeX will with
only small extra style files.  Since I learned to hack style files,
I've never wanted to use plain TeX.

The main reason is that LaTeX does things right that I or most people
without experience in book design would do wrong.  LaTeX (or AMS TeX
or APS TeX) is a better starting place than plain TeX.