Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!csrd.uiuc.edu!s41.csrd.uiuc.edu!eijkhout From: eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: Why use TeX if ... Message-ID: <1991May9.164341.14084@csrd.uiuc.edu> Date: 9 May 91 16:43:41 GMT References: <1991May4.165602.1@csc.anu.edu.au> <1991May4.191951.26699@csrd.uiuc.edu> Sender: news@csrd.uiuc.edu (news) Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development Lines: 43 Damian.Cugley@prg.ox.ac.uk (Damian Cugley) writes: >Great, now do it in TeX and make it "flow" around a PostScript picture You mean around the figure, not just around the bounding box? The latter is easy. I always wondered how you'd do the former. It means you'd have to have a postscript interpreter aboard. > Indent the left edge of the text of the >page to make room for a 50mmx50mm illustration. Produce a title page >with the lettering set around a circle -- in less than half an hour. Both no sweat. >There is a lot that TeX cannot do. There is a lot that TeX can only do >with unreasonable difficulty -- very simple magazine layouts (with >*non*-floating illustrations) require a lot of TeX GrandMastery. Agreed. But TeX was never meant for that. It is basically a book typesetter, not a page formatter. >What makes TeX good? TeX is portable, has the most sophisticated >line-breaking and maths-setting systems, and has one semi-standard >markup style (LaTeX 2.x). It is the only system where a pauper such as >myself has a chance of making and using their own typefaces. On the >other hand people who don't have the time to waste becoming an >arch-hacker and who don't care about the rather poor typesetting >produced by DTP systems will be better off with MacWhatever. I don't agree. First of all it's not a choice of having poor typesetting (and personally, I can live easier without text flowing around figures than without decent typesetting) *or* becoming an arch-hacker. If LaTeX suits your purposes (and it does for many people) using TeX is just fine. Only if you want to do sophisticated page design do you need some fancy dtp package. But then, what's the use of doing that? I may do it in a report that I'm writing, but when I submit that to a journal they tell me 'great, just give us the figure on glossy paper'. Victor.