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From: dswt@stl.stc.co.uk (Stewart Tansley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: The programming CULT
Summary: TeX may be beautiful, but it's crap for 'the rest of us'
Message-ID: <3297@stl.stc.co.uk>
Date: 9 Aug 90 09:11:25 GMT
References: <312@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> <2840.26b7eb6e@cc.helsinki.fi> <188@sierra.STANFORD.EDU> <2856.26bd2bf0@cc.helsinki.fi>
Sender: news@stl.stc.co.uk
Reply-To: "Stewart Tansley" <dswt@stl.stc.co.uk>
Organization: STC Technology Limited, London Road, Harlow, Essex, UK
Lines: 36
Affiliation: Jenny Agutter Appreciation Society of Edinburgh (Harlow branch!)

In article <2856.26bd2bf0@cc.helsinki.fi> mnykanen@cc.helsinki.fi writes:
>In article <188@sierra.STANFORD.EDU>, siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU (siegman) writes:
>> [Lovingly about TeX & TeX-based writing, concluding with...]
>> WYSIWYG inherently fails; and a procedural or "markup" or coded style
>> of formatting like TeX is really easier -- especially when things are
>> as beautifully designed as TeX, and Textures, are.
>
[Then Matti replies...]
>The point I was trying to make is that MOST OF THE PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO
>USE A COMPUTER, THEY ONLY WANT NEAT PAGES! CTRL-T, "source files",
>macros and procedures are "inhuman" concepts for them, unnecessary side
>steps from the main goal. Are we "professionals" force-feeding our
>perverse world view to users who consider US experts on what THEY want
>to get done with the computer? I thought Mac was revolutionary; seems we can
>force it to be just another computer..

Sorry, I just couldn't resist a strong 'here, here' for Matti! *Why* do TeX
fans not get this point? 'CS majors' can keep TeX if they are happy, but
wordprocessing is not *only* done by CS majors. (By CS majors I'm trying to
imply 'those people that probably enjoy programming at the same time as they're 
trying to write English.)

My secretary does not want to program - she wants to write a nicely formatted
letter or report. Same for my manager, same for me. I'll leave programming to
the rest of my job, thanks very much.

Now if Word/Nisus/etc could output in TeX, we'd all be happy, wouldn't we? :-)
Aren't there mega bucks in this idea (not new!)?

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