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From: rhyde@ucrmath.ucr.edu (randy hyde)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re:  TeX Printer(LONG)
Message-ID: <11644@ucrmath.ucr.edu>
Date: 2 Feb 91 17:21:14 GMT
References: <1991Feb1.133159.86253@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au> <11641@ucrmath.ucr.edu> <1991Feb2.151519.28432@utstat.uucp>
Organization: University of California, Riverside
Lines: 50

>>>>
First of all, I'm going to be blunt. You don't know what you are talking
about. An equation editor ( such as Expressionist, MacEq'n, etc...) + a
word processor is no way to prepare mathematical documents of any length.
There are all kinds of problems to do with referencing, proofing, 
equation numbering,etc...INLINE equations.
<<<<

Gee, I've written MANY technical articles on my Mac and PC using these
products.  I found them MUCH easier to use than TeX.  Clearly someone
who is very familiar with TeX and not so familiar with other products
(or vice versa, for that matter) may scoff at the use of one or the
other as a "true" technical word processor.  My experience with people's
attitudes on the subject is "whatever you learn first, you stick with."

>>>
Putting TeX onto the GS is feasible and is a worthwhile venture. TeX
is free( EXP and MathWriter are in the $400 range).
<<<

You didn't find me in disagreement with this assessment.  I hope the result
is fast enough to be  practical (this is more a problem with GS software
development tools rather than TeX).

>>>>
Sorry to come across in such a harsh tone, but people who keep bringing
up the Mac and the PC as alternatives to workstations are just
fooling themselves. At the moment, they are simply not there software
wise, OS wise,etc...They are no more useful than a GS, Amiga, ST, etc...
The PC and the Mac are business oriented computers. They gave up on
higher education some time ago.
<<<

>> Sorry to come across

Why should you be any different than anyone else around here?!?

As to the comment concerning Macs vs. Workstations, I use a Sun Sparcstation,
a 486, a 386, a Mac IIfx, and a GS (among other, lesser machines).  I use
the Mac the most, the 80x86 machines next, the Sparc third, and the GS fourth.
I'm not a total UNIX weenie (I don't run X with 10 tasks going at once, for
example), I use UNIX to get simple tasks accomplished. Perhaps I'm lazy, but
I much prefer the Mac and the PCs because they're some much easier to use.

As for TeX, I piss off a lot of my students each quarter because I make them
learn it in order to submit their lab reports and homework assignments.  If
we had FrameMaker on the Suns I'd probably switch to that.  I've got nothing
against TeX personally, it's just that FrameMaker would be easier to teach
and use than TeX by freshmen and sophomores.
*** Randy Hyde