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From: elwell@osu-eddie.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Fonts, professional typesetting, et
Message-ID: <3138@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Feb-87 18:40:20 EST
Article-I.D.: osu-eddi.3138
Posted: Mon Feb 16 18:40:20 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Feb-87 06:54:38 EST
References: <12288@brunix.UUCP> <212300001@mirror>
Reply-To: elwell@osu-eddie.UUCP (Clayton M. Elwell)
Organization: The Ohio State University, CIS Dept.
Lines: 102

I think it's time to toss in a few facts to give the disinformation some
flavor...

In article <212300001@mirror> rs@mirror.UUCP writes:
>Have you ever tried to get TeX to set newspaper type?  I have, and it's
>an enourmous waste of time and computer power.  Face it, there is no
>way to avoid lots of hyphenation when setting 9pt type in a 23pica (~2in)
>column.

Well, let's see. 4 columns per page (~1.5 in wide columns), in 8pt Helvetica
Narrow.  Does that count?  TeX has an extremely good hyphenation algorithm.
It tries not to hyphenate, to be sure, but if density is more important than
readability, just lower the hyphenation penalty (\hyphenpenalty=mumble).

>Second, I don't think TeX is a good fit for adwork or custom typehouses.
>One major strength (and, in the hands of incompetents, the biggest weakness)
>of typehouses and design firms is their huge font library.  TeX can use
>any fonts for which it has the right information, but I challenge anyone
>to calculate bounding boxes for a "shadow" typeface (i.e., outlined
>letters with deep shadows) where kerning is totally dependant on the
>adjacent letters -- how deep the shadows can cut into each other.

One of TeX's advantages is that it DOESN'T use bounding boxes.  It uses
arbitrary pair-based kerning and ligatures (that interact correctly).  If
you can kern it manually, you can tell TeX how to do it once and never have
to worry about it again.  I challenge any other typesetting system to
take a Russian phrase in standard Roman orthography and translate it into
the appropriate Cyrillic characters completely automatically when the phrase
is set in a Cyrillic font (heh heh).

>As far as bookwork goes, TeX's output model is not powerful enough.
>Modern systems (e.g., Xyvision, Bedford, Texet, etc.) all have the
>ability to back-up and re-set the previous page using a different
>format if final page leaves you with a widow or such.  TeX never
>looks back -- once the page is set, it's forgotten about.  TeX
>also doesn't have the concept of "exception pages" where you want
>to override your style rules for this one page because it has, say,
>five pictures on it.  Before you point out Addison-Wesley's use,
>take a good look at the design of the books they use, and compare
>it with something like a technical manual with lots of diagrams.

Aside from the fact that I've done technical manuals with lots of diagrams
with no problem, this is just wrong.  TeX will reset a page as many times
as you want (although it does have a [high] threshold to catch endless
loops in the output stage).  For example, the TeXbook (the author's
combined tutorial and reference manual) has an example of an output
macro that will repeatedly reset the page until it gets two columns balanced
to the same number of lines (great for parallel translations).  As for
exception pages, I'm suprised to hear that, since I've done it myself
with no difficulty ("well, this page is a chapter heading, so we'll put
the page number at the bottom, clear the page header, etc.").  To quote a
bad TV commercial, "Where's the beef?"

>Fourth, it's just too hard to do too many things in TeX.  You don't need
>to use \vbox to 3.5i{...} to get vertical justfication.  Heck, the
>newspaper composition system I bought five years ago had vertical
>justification, and the syntax was very similar, including explicit
>marking of "spread points."  This can be corrected with a good macro
>package, but who's going to write and maintain it?

I don't even understand the question.  Maybe I haven't had enough practice
doing bad layout, but my columns & pagees come out vertically justified OK.

>Finally, the cost of $100 for TeX is a fictitious one.  You still have
>to buy a machine, terminals, train your users to use the machine's
>native OS and editor, etc.  You have to support them, and you have to
>deal with ongoing maintenance.  There are no firms out there that will
>install, write macros, and keep you supplied with maintenance releases
>(Knuth just found a TeX bug last month, so it isn't bug-free yet...).
>Try telling any large typehouse, let alone any large newspaper, that
>you've got a great new composition system for them that's cheap; the
>only thing missing is software support from the vendor.

Poor little baby, all alone in the big bad marketplace... [1/2 :-)]  You
are, of course, ignoring the worldwide and highly active TeX user's group.
I won't even mention the fact that several top-notch typography houses here
in Columbus are *real* interested in TeX because it can do things nothing else
will.  How many vendors of turnkey (read: proprietary) systems are interested
in giving you real support?  They've already got you by the privates, and
they don't need to care anymore.

>Except for the output model, I admit that none of these problems are
>insurmountable.  Still and all, that may be good enough to do many of
>the commercial typesetting jobs now being done more traditionally.
>I just think that the TeX evangelists are over-eager and over-optimistic:
>TeX has its places, but the commercial market is not one of them, yet.

Since the output model is not the limiting factor (although, being
amazingly flexible, it does take some study to understand), I don't
see your point.  In my experience, TeX and TeX output have survived quite
well in the commercial market, thank you.

>Rich $alz					"Drug tests p**s me off"
>Mirror Systems, Cambridge Massachusetts		rs@mirror.TMC.COM
>{adelie, mit-eddie, ihnp4, harvard!wjh12, cca, cbosgd, seismo}!mirror!rs

-- 
====================
Total Nuclear Annihilation:				Clayton Elwell
The Ultimate Error Message.			Elwell@Ohio-State.ARPA
					   ...!cbosgd!osu-eddie!elwell
====================