Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!jarthur!dhosek From: dhosek@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (D.A. Hosek) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: Help me defend LaTeX Keywords: TeX, LaTeX, technical writing Message-ID: <2602@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> Date: 24 Oct 89 19:30:06 GMT References: <1762@naucse.UUCP> <71781@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Reply-To: dhosek@jarthur.UUCP (D.A. Hosek) Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA Lines: 32 In article <71781@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Gary Perlman writes: >I think promoting LATeX in a writing class would direct student attention >away from more important issues. Finally, the support tools like spelling >corrector and thesaurus, not to mention a variety of WWB-like tools on >PC's and Macs designed to work with WP and Word, make TeX seem like an >even poorer choice for educational purposes. Yes, but to discourage LaTeX's use is also a bad choice. It is becoming increasingly common to do things like use a package like WordPerfect to create the TeX or LaTeX input file (see the last issue of TUGboat for an article about this) in a rather friendly manner with all of the advantages of being able to type control-alt-shift-G to get a capital gamma (yeah, that's a _big_ improvement of \Gamma), so the arguments about the spelling corrector etc. don't really wash. Besides, I think that pushing spelling correctors can be just as dangerous as pushing formatting languages (if not more so), since there is a tendency for people with spelling checkers to never read their work (believe me, I've seen it on many an occasion). I find it very annoying to read text that says things like "they never read there work". I think the best course of action would probably be to inform the students that something like LaTeX exists and at least give them a little background information on it. The principles of structured document design are _not_ going to go away: SGML is an international standard, far more techincal journals except TeX/LaTeX/AmSTeX files than MS-Word files, the stuff is there, and it's becoming more and more common. Ignoring LaTeX (or related systems) in a technical writing class would almost be like ignoring computers. -dh -- D.A. Hosek | Internet: DHOSEK@HMCVAX.CLAREMONT.EDU | Bitnet: DHOSEK@HMCVAX.BITNET | Phone: 714-920-0655 (I used to be a Mudder, but I got better)