Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!eecae!tank!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!uxg.cso.uiuc.edu!uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald
From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: (La)TeX for the Mac
Message-ID: <46100290@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 9 Mar 89 15:11:00 GMT
References: <970@swisun.swivax.UUCP>
Lines: 40
Nf-ID: #R:swisun.swivax.UUCP:970:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:46100290:000:2247
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald    Mar  9 09:11:00 1989


>I will finish with a word of advise. Do not use TEX on
>any machine MAc or otherwise. After all it was written in early 70's for
>primitive 7-bit computers, with crimminally crude interface. About the only
>place TEX is still acceptable in late 80's is automatic typesetting of 
>data base output.

I strongly disagree. TeX is still the method of choice for typesetting,
particularly complicated typesetting, on small computers. It is 
an entirely different thing from so-called "desktop publishing"
software. It is not really for writing letters or memos, though I use
it for that. It is for books - real, whole, big books, and also
for smaller bookish things. Particularly, it is for technical books,
those that involve lots of equations, endnotes, references,
bibliographies, etc. Believe me, I am writing a 300 page book in TeX -
and about 50% of the pages are half mathematics. I need to refer to
equations from all over the book, and keep them all straight as
I revise and polish. With TeX, it is all automatic. TeX also has the 
great advantage that it comes with a VERY complete set of fonts,
containing just about any character you could need, that are all
designed to work correctly with its automatic formatting mechanism. 
The problem here is that they look like the fonts used in math books -
some people might not like that, but it is great that my book
"looks like" a math book (actually, it is Chemistry.) When
people look at TeX output from a laser printer, they get the feeling
that they are looking a slightly lower quality version of what 
a math book should look like. When they see something that comes
out of a Mac (or a PC clone of a MAC product), they feel like thay
are looking at something that came out of a MAC. It doesn't look
"right".  And, finally, if I send my TeX book off to a real typesetting
operation, it will BE a real book. If you send a Mac desktop
publishing effort off to a company with a real typesetter using
Postscript, it will look like a high physical quality version of
a desktop publishing effort - even if the same physical typesetter
was used for the two things.

And yes, TeX is indeed arcane and sometimes one wishes for something
easier. But the end result has to be as good.

Doug McDonald