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From: higgin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Paul Higginbottom - CATS)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.applications
Subject: Re: TeX vs Word
Message-ID: <17673@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 16 Jan 91 16:12:31 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>
Reply-To: higgin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Paul Higginbottom - CATS)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 47

In article <1991Jan15.214938.13706@Neon.Stanford.EDU> torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan J Torrie) writes:
$ [how to implement style sheets {tagging}] in TeX...
$> I can live without it though, search/replace in an editor works fine.

<Gasp> There's no need to resort to such pain.

$  Although it would perhaps be possible to do this with some
$super-duper Search/Replace function [probably involving huge regular
$expressions, and extremely complicated semantics], style sheets make
$this automatic.  Please, if you haven't seen style sheets [hell,
$they've been around for over 5 years], you really don't know what
$you're missing.

My goal in posting here isn't to recommend/promote, but just to point out
that style tagging with TeX is easy.  You define the styles you want first,
use those defined style names in your document, and then if you want to
change the overall styles, you just change the definitions,
just like with style sheets.

E.g:

\def\mysubheadstyle#1{\noindent{\bf #1}\par}
                                (bold)(new para)
Which can be used as:

\mysubheadstyle{Overview}

Which will cause the word Overview to appear on a new paragraph,
without indent, boldfaced, and subsequent text will appear in paragraphs
below.

Really not tough, although I do recognize that non-programmer types
don't want to learn codes, commands, names, etc.

And just to add gasoline to the fire, I think comparing products like
TeX and Word is futile because different folks like to work in different
ways (programs like `vi' [which I also think has merit, by the way] are proof
of this).

I generate the prettiest memos in Commodore :-).  TeX might seem massive
overkill for memos, but I've developed all my own style tags over time
and it's really very easy with \memo, \To, \Subject, etc.  I do recognize
that a lot of people can't deal with a discrepency between the way the
screen looks (as they edit it) and what comes out of the printer.  Personally,
I think AmigaTeX's previewer is just great.

	Paul.