Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!knapp
From: knapp@cs.utexas.edu (Edgar Knapp)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: (La)TeX for the Mac
Message-ID: <4982@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 9 Mar 89 22:06:57 GMT
References: <1555@orion.cf.uci.edu> <11985@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 31

[ stuff deleted ]

>I use MicroSoft Word (3.02) on the Mac and I like to bitch about
>it and the fascinating bugs it has.  No way I'd trade it for
>Textures.  Textures claims to be no harder to learn than Word -
>false.  Word at least attempts to be WYSIWYG (an invisible
>language - which allows stuff to be done easily, but which can be
>annoying when things aren't working quite right).  TeX is yet
>another line noise language.  You can see whats going on, but you
>can't not see what's going on (and just see your text) during edit.
>Textures at least does let you preview on the screen, which was
>unavailable under UNIX until recently (a VT100 just doesn't do
>it for you).
>
>Unless you need to support documents previously written in TeX,
>and all you have is a Mac, you don't need it.
>
This is utter nonsense. The truth is that unless you do heavy
mathematics, need an integrated bibliogarphic database system, want to
prepare slides containing lots of math, don't want to be concerned
with kerning, want every aspect of the appearance of yoor
document to be customizable, etc. etc., you do need the power of
TeX/LaTeX. And TeXtures is a fine implementation of this typesetting
language. 

You don't like/need/use Tex? Fine. But please refrain from spreading
myths about it.

Edgar Knapp

(knapp@cs.utexas.edu)