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From: dhosek@cbrown.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: expensive TeX book
Message-ID: <8170@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Date: 22 Aug 90 23:56:11 GMT
References: <8164@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
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Reply-To: dhosek@cbrown.claremont.edu
Organization: Harvey Mudd College
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In article <1990Aug22.222115.936@nmt.edu>, nraoaoc@nmt.edu (Daniel Briggs) writes...
>In article <8164@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> dhosek@sif.claremont.edu writes:

>>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).

>On a related note, someone said that "TeX does most of the editing for you."
>It depends on the level of editing done, but if the editor is doing a
>thorough job, NOT TRUE!  It can take several months of solid editing to do
>a first rate job on a conference proceedings.

Or in the case of TeX in Practice, two years. (well somewhat
less, but that's roughly the timespan between the conference and
the appearance of the book.

Knowing Malcolm and seeing bits of the book, it is a good job
editing (and speaking from the perspective of someone who has
edited TeX-formatted submissions, it makes things almost harder,
especially in the case of those who misuse LaTeX).

-dh

btw, I got a mail message today from the person who bought the
book at Texas A&M and he says it was well worth it.

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