Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ucbvax!CUNYVMS1.BITNET!DLV
From: DLV@CUNYVMS1.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: TUG and TeX...
Message-ID: <9009052355.AA18416@lilac.berkeley.edu>
Date: 5 Sep 90 23:12:00 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 92


OK, I'll byte. :) Here's a constructive suggestion: print a directory
of known free and low-cost TeX's for all systems (not just MS-DOS) in
every issue of TUGBoat. If there are no updates, just reprint the last
month's directory. Start with the list of MS-DOS TeX's you just posted,
add OZ TeX for the Mac, Unix TeX from U of Washington, et al. Does it
sound good, or is TUGBoat scared of its commercial TeX advertizers? :)

(As a variation of the above, you might want to run a directory of all
known sources of TeX, free and commercial, using vendor-supplied
information. (Provided the information is in good taste---i.e., price
and availability, not unsubstantiated claims.) How much space would this
take? 5 pages? 10 pages of every issue?

Regarding the question: who put in more free time, I'm sure you've
donated more of your time and effort to helping TeX users than almost
anyone, and certainly more than myself!!! I want you to know that your
efforts are really appreciated, and I hope that the fact that you've
helped so many people makes you feel good. Still, this doesn't give you
the right to post unsolicited promotional materials (and since you say
the .sig never brought you any clients, this is one more reason to
change it). [I should note for comparison that if I multiplied the hours
I've spent on various aspects of Russian TeX: polishing the hyphenation
patterns, digging up obscure non-Slavic Cyrillic writing systems,
helping RusTeX users via e-mail and more often the phone by, say, $50, I
too would come up with an impressive amount. I've also spent hunderds of
$$$'s on phone calls to the USSR (~$2/minute) and on snailing new
versions of software there (that's $10.75 a shot), and I haven't made a
cent off it, and don't expect to. And I'm not bitching!! :) Of course
I'd never think of comparing my contributions with yours. ]

Regarding the phone support for commercial TeX's: I'm afraid I'm going
to have to rely on anecdotal evidence again... Not being a licencee of
any commercial TeX, I've never tried any company's phone support.
However I am acquainted with a number of licencees of PCTeX and other
commercially available business programs (things like Microsoft Excel,
Lotus 123, etc). I don't know anyone who's ever called PCI for tech
support. I'm sure that PCI people are very nice and would provide
excellent support if needed. I know for a fact that Kinch people are
extremely nice (they sent me a thank you note for something PD that I
uploaded somewhere :). But let me waste a bit more bandwidth and tell
you about an experience with phone support I've had a few months ago. I
was installing a LAN using the hardware from a certain 3-letter
manufacturer and the software from a certain 1-digit and 3-letter
manufacturer :), and the software consitently claimed that all the
hardware malfunctioned, even though it passed the 3-letter
manufacturer's extensive diagnostics. We've called the tech support a
number of times, and every time they told us that we must have set
certain software parameters incorrectly and we must experiment with all
possible switch values to find the one that works. After we've exhausted
all possible combinations, they told us that we must be doing something
really wrong and that perhaps we should talk to an "engineer"; that'd
cost us $150 per hour of fraction thereof. We agreed, and the
converation went approximately like this:

I: I can't get any of out X cards to work with your network software...
S: Do you have card X?
I: Yes.
S: Do you have software version N?
I: Yes.
S: Hold on.
 ...
S: Versions before N+1 don't work with card X. Our documentation is in
error and our technical support didn't know this. You must upgrade.

The entire conversation lasted 3 minutes, about half of which time I was
on hold. They charged us $150 for the answr, and another $800 for the
software upgrade (which works as documented).

Now, I'm not suggesting that all software publishers are like this :),
but I think that a new TeX user is better off getting a free TeX, and if
she runs into a problem, get help from consultant who bills for services
rendered (such is yourself:), not pay hundreds of dollars for the right
for phone support that she'll prbably never use. Or at the very least
the user has the right to know that this option is available.

Yes, the PCTeX manual is excellent, and, unless I'm mistaken, is
available separately. Let me give you another piece of anecdotal
evidence. Before I went away to play golf in August, I gave a bunch of
SBTeX diskettes to someone I know who's nearly computer illiterate. He
successfully unzipped them, and was churning out fine-looking papers
within 3 days, using no help, and no documentation other than "TeX for
the impatient" (an excellent book too, by the way). If you heard some of
the questions about MS-DOS he's asked me since I've come back, you'd
agree that if he can use TeX to produce papers with no phone support,
then anyone can. :)

(Hey! Here's an idea for all you enterpreneurs out there: start a
1-900-TeX-HELP number. .5:)

Dimitri Vulis
CUNY GC Math