Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!amdcad!sun!rusty@velveeta.Berkeley.EDU
From: rusty@velveeta.Berkeley.EDU (rusty wright)
Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop
Subject: Re: Yuppie software
Message-ID: <41143@sun.uucp>
Date: 5 Feb 88 18:14:24 GMT
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Distribution: comp
Lines: 33
Approved: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com

> Also, TeX is (1) not even remotely WYSIWYG (much as I hate that
> overused acronym) and has a pretty hefty learning curve.

I agree that plain TeX is not easy to use, but the vast majority
of people shouldn't be using plain TeX.  If you're going to use TeX
you need a set of macros that make it easy to type in your document
and that handle all of the stylistic conventions that you're
following (LaTeX is the best example).  Basically, you should be
worrying about the content and not about the formatting.  WYSIWG
systems tend to force you to be constantly aware of the formatting.
This primarily applies to printed things that are long; books, reports,
etc. or things that you do repeatedly that have the same format each
time.  Clearly, if I'm going to be doing a one page ad I'm better
off using something like PageMaker.  But if I'm doing a book I'd
much rather use TeX.

One of the other advantages of TeX is that on Unix and DOS (I'm not
sure about TeXtures on the Mac) you can use your favorite editor to
edit your .tex files.  Typically the search, replace, macro
capability, etc. capabilities of the WYSIWYG systems isn't nearly as
good as a Unix or Unix descendant text editor (for example, emacs and
vi).

But the main point is that you shouldn't think that one program is
going to fill all of your desktop publishing needs.

--------------------------------------
	rusty c. wright
	rusty@weyl.berkeley.edu ucbvax!weyl!rusty
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