Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!apple!agate!ucbvax!CUNYVMS1.BITNET!DLV
From: DLV@CUNYVMS1.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: TUG and TeX...
Message-ID: <9009040308.AA06677@lilac.berkeley.edu>
Date: 3 Sep 90 20:53:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 122


First, I'd like to apologize to Don Hosek for not-quite-deservedly jumping
and flaming him for saying that emTeX drivers don't use PK: he surely was
mistaken, and considering how much volunteer work he does answering
everyone's questions and maintaining TeX repositories; many thanks to him
for the terrific job he's doing. Surely he's entitled to make mistakes every
once in a while, and everyone is entitled to point out such mistakes...
Still...

Now, let me relate to the readers of this newsgroup a story, which, I hope,
is not too long or boring. I should probably start by mentioning that I'm a
doctoral student in math, and I support my family (and my addiction to
expensive computer hardware:) by owning with my wife a software consulting
company. I have a client who puts out a large number of newsletters,
brochures, and the like. (Interestingly, the job I do for them has to do
with math, not all all with text processing, or else I'd have straightened
them out long ago:). When I first came there, I noticed how they produced
their newsletter... It involved at the time 3 young women who used Aldus
Pagemaker under MS-DOS to prepare the few pages. Most of their work consists
of printing out a document on a laset printer, looking at the printout,
fixing a few page breaks, moving things around with a mouse, printout out
again, until everything is positioned where they want it. The resulting
documents are mailed to various subsets of an about 1000-name mailing list,
and it is understood that they become obsolete within a few weeks and are
thrown away by the recepients.

I once observed how the young woman in charge of this desktop publishing
group printed out the same document 3 times trying to ensure that a header
was centered on the page. She was loudly complaining that in a WYSIWYG
system she cannot accurately position the text with the mouse, and what
seemed centered on the screen was not centered on the printout. I informed
her that there's this absolutely great typesetting system called TeX, where
she could easily solve this problem using the \centerline command; and that
indeed TeX would be perfectly suitable for the kinds of documents they
produce (which involve lots of texts and a few tables, numbers, and simple
math formulas). She became extremely agitated and said that she's heard
about TeX and 1) it's extremely expensive, 2) she doesn't want me to mention
the existence of better alternatives for DTP to the management because then
the company would no longer need 3 people to position things on the page by
trial and error. At that time, I figured it's none of my business (and I
really was supposed to be doing something unrelated). (Yes, I conjectured
that PM may have a command to center text on a page, but she wasn't using
it. I'm not familiar with PM.) This particular young woman left the company
some time later, and now makes very good money at another company performing
similar tasks on a Macintosh with Microsoft Works.

Later on, I became aware that the company was planning to expand its
newsletter-writing operation and was considering getting software other than
PM. I approached the person doing the decision-making and proposed that I
show her how TeX can make their lives easier. She appreciated my interest,
but responded with the following statements:

* She too is familiar with TeX, believes that TeX would be the perfect
system for the task at hand, and would prefer to use it.

* However, they have a limited budget, and getting TeX, device drivers for
laser printer and a dot matrix printer, screen previwer, and appripriate
fonts would cost well over $1K, and they don't want to spend this kind of
money at the time.

* She has never heard of freely copiable TeX's for MS-DOS, she doubts that
such things exist or are comparable to commercial implementations, but she'd
like to see it in principle.

You will kindly recall that the majority of TeX (and non-TeX-DTP) users out
there in the real world have no access to Usenet, TeXhax, UKTeX, and get
most of their information on TeX from TUGBoat or people that read TUGBoat.
The anecdotal evidence above suggests that this group of people is given a
version of MS-DOS TeX reality that's very different from the reality as I
(and, hopefully, most people familiar with the subject) perceive it. The
impression one gets from reading TUGBoat is that, indeed, one needs to spend
*considerably* more $$$ on software to buy a working TeX for MS-DOS than for
buying PageMaker or Ventura Publisher or WordPerfect... There's *no mention*
of freely distributed TeX's for MS-DOS of equal quality.

Here are some ways in which these TeX sellers hurt our community:

* they rip off those ignorant of the existence of better alternatives.
People buy their TeX's instead of spending their computer budget on
something they really need. (Note that buyers of commercial TeXs are
ignorant / not too bright through no fault of theirs.)

* they prevent the spread of TeX. People who've spent $2,000 on software
are less likely to give free copies to others.

* they prevent programmers from releasing the results of their work into the
public domain. People are reluctant to make their programs publicly
available for fear that someone will start selling them; or at least they
distribute them without the source code.

It's sad that TUGBoat is in effect aiding and abetting these dishonest and
unscrupulous individuals (who should be denounced and ostracized). I am
definitely not suggesting that there is a conscious conspiracy on the part
of TUGBoat to suppress the the truth about the availability of TeX for
MS-DOS. :) (I think I know the people involved too well to believe that.)
However, I have stated time and again that the large number of ads for
commercial MS-DOS TeX's, and simultaneous disappearance of all mentions of
free TeX's (the combination that gives a reader a totally false impression
about TeX's availability) look extremely improper and make everyone doubt
TUGBoat's credibility. I have raised these questions with Barbara Beeton and
with Alan Hoenig, and with all my deep respect and admiration for these
folks, I'm really not satisfied with their repsonses.

I suggest that TUGBoat should refuse to run ads for commercial TeX-related
products when equivalent products for the same platform can be had for free.
(An example of such a product would be the $450 WordPerfect-to-TeX
translator.) Such ads constitute only a small protion of TUGBoat ads.

Regarding the suggestion that TUGBoat is a volunteer effort, and is not
obligated to inform its readers about the existence of public-domain
software: I'd like to point out that I (and most readers) pay for TUGBoat;
in fact, I pay more for it than I pay for Newsweek, New York Magazine, or
Insight. :) I am very unhappy that it gives its readers a false impression
by publishing those ads (really intended for suckers who don't know any
better) and *not* tellings its readers that better alternatives exist;
that's a job very poorly done. I've told various people involved about my
concerns, now I'm posting this to a newsgroup, and if the situation doesn't
change, I'll just stop getting TUGBoat due to lack of credibility.

Happy flaming,
Dimitri Vulis
CUNY GC Math