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From: klaus@cnix.uucp (klaus u schallhorn)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Common TeX FlamE
Message-ID: <1990Nov16.215237.22455@cnix.uucp>
Date: 16 Nov 90 21:52:37 GMT
Sender: klaus@cnix.uucp (klaus u schallhorn)
Followup-To: alt.flame
Organization: pionier publications
Lines: 98


In <1990Nov15.085657.2589@nntp-server.caltech.edu> marcel seems to ask for it
>	In <1990Nov14.150714.15442@cnix.uucp> klaus u schallhorn (klaus@cnix.uucp)
>	complains about the

>	> awful chattyness of TeX. 
>	and
>	> TeX's "lust" to talk, and to talk, and to talk....

If you read my article, you'll find I say " [pardon me] awful " ...
					    ===========
>	However, klaus continues 
>	> Please note that I don't regard myself as being familiar with
>	> TeX. I've just compiled it yesterday, [...]

Ok, I didn't tell you that I've worked through Knuth's 5 vols, through
Lamport's LaTeX book, through Spivak, Apple and Schwarz and a host of
others buried under 2 years of TUGboat [and I'm too tired to list others]
over the last, say, 18 months. I've played with most of the examples
on a PC with a borrowed TeX [I've given it back since, and not, because
I don't like what it does].

>	WOW! You must be a real genius! You just compiled the program, you
>	aren't quite sure yet whether it compiled correctly, you haven't used
>	TeX before, and already you know completely what's wrong with the
>	program. Thank you so much for this insight, I'm sure all readers
>	of this group have been waiting for it.

As a matter of fact, I'm quite a humble person. Since '82 I do all the
applications programming here [editor, database server, chart generation...],
but I would not dare to call myself an expert on C. This is why I do not 
regard myself being even familiar with TeX. 

If you know C, you also know that it is far more elegant than the commands
you enter into TeX. This is one reason why I see TeX as a "chatty" environment,
the other being its error messages.

>	> I would have loved to
>	>     cat whatever | tex | lpr -dvi
Agreed, cat whatever is perhaps misleading. What I *meant* was a construct
we use here to collect text files and data from four different sources,
which are then piped to our current formatter. The actual script [nlout] 
looks like this:

	(
	cat pip.`week`;
	chart -hp /home/lib/ecolib/D/`date +%y`/`date +%m`/int;
	chart -hp /home/lib/ecolib/GB/`date +%y`/`date +%m`/int;
	[...] 
	adprep `week +1`;
	standard.info;
	) | szp | lpr


>	> [...] even knows unix?
Never claimed to. I was just naive enough to assume "cat whatever" would
be easier to recognise that saying "nlout | tex | lpr -dvi".

> Next thing I noticed, you can't ^C out of TeX, [...]

>	Maybe you did not compile it correctly? The TeX versions I have seen
>	(yes, under UNIX) all react to a ctrl-C with a prompt, at which
>	you can, among other things, type an X to terminate the program.

As a matter of fact I'm still not sure I did. The tape I have has quite
a few different TeXes [2.9 to supposedly 3.0] on it, tared, compressed, split, 
showing up several times in its own subdirs as web, compressed web, tar'ed
web, tar'ed, compressed and split... That's why after two days compiling
[and I'm not doing this on a Z80] I gave up. Then, browsing News,
reading about common tex, I thought that might be something.

Today I did, however read this:

Date: 15 Nov 90 08:33:44 GMT
Lines: 23

[ ... ]

>	PS - I was highly impressed by the quality of the UNIX TeX tape that I just
>	 received. It compiled with almost no problems, and the problems where well
>	described in the "possible problems" file, so everything (including metafont)
>	is up and running. [ I remember the horrors of trying to get TeX 2.9 up ].
	                     ==================================================
>	I highly recommend using the Univ. of Washington's tape TeX tape delivery.
>	If you are interested, you can order a tape (costs $150) from:
>	  ELISABET@MAX.U.WASHINGTON.EDU

I took out sender et al in case you felt like flaming again. And I'm
sorry if I said anything against your favourite toy. A "toy", that I
desparately want to use because I know there's nothing better this side of
a million bucks, pounds or whathaveyou [or maybe not]. That doesn't mean, 
it's beyond criticism.

It's ok with me to follow up at alt.flame now.

klaus
-- 
George Orwell was an Optimist