Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!fernwood!uupsi!sunic!chalmers.se!cs.chalmers.se!jeffrey From: jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se (Alan Jeffrey) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: Is there a manuscript.sty? Message-ID: <4653@undis.cs.chalmers.se> Date: 28 Jun 91 08:13:42 GMT References: <1991Jun27.112938.21202@infoserver.th-darmstadt.de> Organization: Dept. of CS, Chalmers, Sweden Lines: 48 In article <1991Jun27.112938.21202@infoserver.th-darmstadt.de> xitijsch@ddathd21.bitnet (Joachim Schrod) writes: > And why does one want to produce an unreadable document? (And in >fact, the rest of your posting describes a style creating an >unreadable document!) Because what makes a readable document for some purposes makes it completely useless for others. In particular, normally emphasis or bold material, or shifts into Greek, or the difference between \Sigma and \sum should be fairly subtle, and should only be obvious to people looking out for it. But if you're sending a ms to a compositor, the last thing you want is to send a subtle ms, you want to send one that shouts `This heading is in bold!' or `This is a summation, not a Sigma!' If you submit typeset manuscript to a compositor, they are not going to love you for it. On the subject of an ms.sty, the main problem is getting the fonts together. As DEK pointed out, if you want to take things like underlining seriously, you need a separate font for it, especially when you start using full markup and need things like wavy-underlining and triple-underlining. There's also real headaches with mathematics, which you don't want to know about. But as a few examples: Let $a$ be a pudding should appear as Let _a_ be a pudding Let $x$ be a pudding should appear as Let x be a pudding Then $f(a)$ is a box should appear as Then f(a) is a box Then $fa$ is a box should appear as Then _fa_ is a box Obviously, this is completely impossible to generate by machine, so you're better off making do with every bit of mathematics underlined. Which isn't what the compositor is used to seeing, and therefore takes more time, and therefore takes more money. One of these days, unless anyone beats me to it (please do) I'll get round to sticking together a full family of cmtt fonts with various sorts of underlining, and put together a ms.sty to go with it. But it'll be a lot of work, and it won't get done until next year sometime. Cheers, Alan. -- Alan Jeffrey Tel: +46 31 72 10 98 jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se Department of Computer Sciences, Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden