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From: rosenkra@convex.com (William Rosencranz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Tex/LaTeX & *.sty files..
Message-ID: <1991Feb04.221451.854@convex.com>
Date: 4 Feb 91 22:14:51 GMT
References: <38673@cup.portal.com> <28507@cs.yale.edu>
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this was the first understandable description of TeX/LaTeX i have seen.
i had to run that sucker once, a couple of years ago, on a sun, and have
totally abandoned it as one of the poorest documented huge systems around
(much worse than something like NASTRAN, for example). personally, i stick
with troff, since it is trivial to use by comparison for simple documents.
TeX may be superior for doing books, but it really is horrible to get up
the learning curve just to write a simple letter (since it takes a week
just to install the damn thing). part of the problem is there does not
seem to be a really simple explanation like what was just posted. you are
stuck with reams of docs to wade thru. i tried to figure out the docs for
the ST version some months ago (before 3.x was available) and gave up
after several hours of wading thru docs written in the format which must
be read only after the system was installed (kind of like posting an
executable of an archiver in the format of that particular archiver :-( ).

maybe it is just the installation instructions on the ST that are rather
sketchy, so don't all u jump on me for loosing it :-). still, it seems to
me that a system as complex as TeX should have a README with at least
this sort of minimal introduction, so that from the first step, a user/
installer has a somewhat global view of how the system works.

thanx to michael fisher for this clear, thumbnail intro. people reading 
that description can probably save a week of frustration...

-bill
rosenkra@convex.com
(bitching, as usual... :-)
--
Bill Rosenkranz            |UUCP: {uunet,texsun}!convex!c1yankee!rosenkra
Convex Computer Corp.      |ARPA: rosenkra%c1yankee@convex.com