Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac.wanted:3839 comp.sys.mac.misc:12495 comp.sys.mac.apps:6352 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!europa.asd.contel.com!gatech!mephisto.gatech.edu!ashwin From: ashwin@gatech.edu (Ashwin Ram) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.wanted,comp.sys.mac.misc,comp.sys.mac.apps Subject: Re: Why does Mac output not look as good as LaTex? Message-ID: <1445@mephisto.edu> Date: 24 May 91 15:19:27 GMT References: <20081@cs.utexas.edu> <1991May20.223955.22343@midway.uchicago.edu> <26376@ttidca.TTI.COM> Sender: news@gatech.edu Reply-To: ashwin@cc.gatech.edu (Ashwin Ram) Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Computing Lines: 37 In-reply-to: rolfl@hedda.uio.no's message of 23 May 91 12:49:46 GMT In article rolfl@hedda.uio.no (Rolf Lindgren) writes: > There is one additional reason why Mac output doesn't look as good as LaTeX: > When figuring line breaks, TeX takes the entire paragraph into account, while > word processors (usually, traditionlly, etc.) only consider the previous line. > So a LaTeX paragraph will almost always be better adjusted. The algorithm that > does this is quite simple, and could well, I suppose, be implemented in a word > processor. Actually, it is more complex than this. Unlike Word, TeX is a typesetter, not a word processor. It has heuristics and penalties associated with various things like word spacing (too much or too little), line spacing, hyphenation (where to hyphenate and where not to hyphenate words), paragraph spacing, moving a figure too far from where it's referenced in the text, spacing after punctuation, ligatures (e.g., when "fi" are printed together, they are run together into one character), kerning (e.g., when you typeset "Yale", you move the "a" left slightly to make it print under the "Y", otherwise the space between the "Y" and the "a" looks like it's too much), math mode (e.g., in-line equations are typeset differently from equations that stand alone by themselves), widows and orphans (not putting section names by themselves at the bottom of a page), etc. etc. etc. None of these things by themselves sound like a big deal, but together they make a tremendous difference in the appearance of the printed page. TeX performs a complex optimization on the entire page to give you the best possible output within its heuristics. This is why it's output looks almost as good as you can get with professional typesetting. (But not quite; no-one has as yet been able to fully mathematicize typesetting aesthetics.) This is also why it's difficult to do this on a WYSIWYG word processor (theoretically, a small change on one page could cause a complete recomputation of all following pages). However, some subset of this optimization could (and should) be performed in real time by WYSIWYG word processors. (E.g., it would be fairly easy to optimize one paragraph at a time.) I'd be interested in hearing about programs that do this. -- Ashwin.