Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!sot-ecs!spqr From: spqr@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Sebastian Rahtz) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: expensive TeX book Message-ID: Date: 23 Aug 90 12:11:24 GMT References: <8164@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> <44773@cornell.UUCP> Sender: spqr@ecs.soton.ac.uk Organization: Southampton University Computer Science Lines: 41 In-reply-to: murthy@algron.cs.cornell.edu's message of 22 Aug 90 13:56:20 GMT In article <44773@cornell.UUCP> murthy@algron.cs.cornell.edu (Chet Murthy) writes: >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 don't have the English costs on me (it isnt on the book), but you bet its less than the US one. our revenge for all those marked-up prices we pay for American books! Ellis Horwood are fools, in IMHO, charging so much for TeXeter (and why in hardback?). 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 well, I can see three reasons for a `real' book: 1) many authors need the `brownie points' from a publication, and people who collect publication statistics dont understand about anything but books from real publishers 2) publishers distribute things, as well as print them; this way, it gets to people who dont get email etc 3) a good few people will be unable/unwilling to print the book out locally (it has some complicated stuff in it). how can libraries get it? people who dont have TeX and are just interested? I agree these are all soluble. I'm just saying that 1990 is too early to give up traditional books. BUT please note that the macros which various chapters of the book describe *are* available electronically, in the UK TeX Archive at least. so you dont need to type in Hoenig's arcana sebastian (in case anyone cares, my chapter in the book was transmogrified into an extended version for a forthcoming book about TeX) -- Sebastian Rahtz S.Rahtz@uk.ac.soton.ecs (JANET) Computer Science S.Rahtz@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Bitnet) Southampton S09 5NH, UK S.Rahtz@sot-ecs.uucp (uucp)