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From: murthy@algron.cs.cornell.edu (Chet Murthy)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: expensive TeX book
Message-ID: <44773@cornell.UUCP>
Date: 22 Aug 90 13:56:20 GMT
References: <8164@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept. Ithaca NY
Lines: 31

dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) writes:

>In article <1990Aug21.212007.6748@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>, wald@theory.lcs.mit.edu (David Wald) writes...
>>Browsing through a bookstore yesterday, I found something very odd: a
>>hardbound book, about half an inch think, called {\em\TeX:
>>applications, uses, methods}, ed. Clark, published by Ellis Horwood,
>>ISBN 0-13-912296-6.  The book is a short collection of essays on uses
>>of TeX.

>>This book was selling for $76.  Huh?  Does anyone know anything about
>>this?  Does the publisher expect anyone to buy this book?  Is the
>>publisher right?  The folks at the store were as confused as I was.

>The book you've come across is essentially the conference
>proceedings from TeX88. Malcolm Clark, the editor is just as
>annoyed as the rest of us at the outrageous price (incidentally,
>I think it's *supposed* to be $70, but the higher price might be
>due to the drop in the value of the dollar).

I wonder if the right thing to do here isn't to just publish it
electronically.  After all, TeX is such a wonderful free program,
and there's so much free software for it, why not make other things
that users contribute to, like proceedings of conferences, free.  I
understand that books that people WRITE personally are different.  But
the contributors don't get much out of this volume.

And the task of editing isn't much less, since TeX does most of it for
you anyway, eh?

Just a thought,
--chet--