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From: epeterso@houligan.encore.com (Eric Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.applications,comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Mac's Microsoft Word
Message-ID: <epeterso.664124978@houligan>
Date: 17 Jan 91 15:09:38 GMT
References: <1991Jan15.031444.5@csc.canterbury.ac.nz> <1991Jan14.222837.20284@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <1991Jan15.214938.13706@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <1991Jan16.135301.27836@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>
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hugo@chocorua.dartmouth.edu (Peter Su) writes:

| In article <1991Jan15.214938.13706@Neon.Stanford.EDU> torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan J Torrie) writes:
| >  Yes, TeX can do basically everything that Word can do.  But it
| >IS complicated to learn.
| 
| What is this myth that TeX is hard to learn?  Grad students here learn
| enough LaTeX to do just about everything in about 2 days.  Problems
| crop up when they need fancier formatting, or when they decide that
| they want to change the default styles...but doing that kind of thing
| should be left to real TeX hackers.

Changing a default style is something that you shouldn't have to hack
at to do.

| Just for fun, let's do a comparison.  I want to make a "section"
| style that skips down on the page, and puts out a section header in
| bold roman, then skips a bit more and formats the first paragraph of
| the section with no paragraph indent.
| 
| In TeX, the macro is roughly like this:
| 
| \def\section#1{\medskip\noindent{\bf #1}\smallskip\noindent}
| 
| Then to use it, *bang* you just type this:
| 
| \section{foo}
| 
| You can fine tune the macro to avoid bad page breaking...but that's
| for hackers.

You've convinced me.  I hereby take back everything I've ever said
about TeX not being intuitive (especially the part with the "*bang*"
in it ... is that in the manual?  Actually, knowing Knuth's stuff, it
probably is :-)

| [[ Comparable Word example, showing Word defficiencies ]]

I bet that I could figure out how to do it in Word without using the
manual faster than I could in TeX.

| So, which system is easier to use?  Hmm?

There is no absolute answer.  TeX is easier for you.  FrameMaker is
easier for me.  Word and WordPerfect are easier for the masses.

| P.S.  Similar troff macros are just as trivial.

Trivial for those who speak the language.  But a picture book is
always going to be easier and more universal reading than a novel in a
foreign language.

Eric
--
       Eric Peterson <> epeterson@encore.com <> uunet!encore!epeterson
   Encore Computer Corp. * Ft. Lauderdale, Florida * (305) 587-2900 x 5208
Why did Constantinople get the works? Gung'f abobql'f ohfvarff ohg gur Ghexf.