Path: utzoo!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ucsd!ucsbcsl!silber@sbphy.ucsb.edu
From: silber@sbphy.ucsb.edu
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: yet another new TeX user aghast at the "TeXBook" !!!!!!
Message-ID: <1481@hub.ucsb.edu>
Date: 18 Apr 89 00:10:53 GMT
Sender: news@hub.ucsb.edu
Organization: UC, Santa Barbara. Physics Computer Services
Lines: 43

The capabilities of TeX are evident.  However, a new user must
stand aghast at the monstrosity called the "TeXBook" .  If pedagogy
and teaching competence are required to keep tenure, knuth should be
booted out of stanford!  The information in the TexBook which pertains
VITALLY to a particular topic is neither indexable by any normal term,
nor is it even gathered together in a coherent paragraph or section.
TeX is a programming language, right? How come it is so difficult to
look up concepts like variable assignment? Furthermore, when TeX runs,
and comes up with its cute:

? i thought you meant that ot that...

and then you type
?h
and tex answers with something like
"i think it would be nice if you looked on page 256 of the TexBook"
and when you look there, it says "Exercise nil.nil: Show how to do
this (display...) in Tex"
and now you have to go look up an answer to an exercise and ...
..what was the question....?  !!!!!!

 By the way how might i write a macro which builds a box from 
{\obeylines ...text lines...}
 and then CENTERS the BOX?  its def minus the body would be:
 \def\centerparagraph#1#2{

}
where #1 is the text and #2 is {a list of attributes for the boxed,
and "obeylines" text}

????
 I gave up after struggling with the DRECKBOOK to try to understand
 how arithmetic operations and assignments are conducted in TeX and then
 finding that \wd0 of was giving me the value of \hsize (the box
 built by \setbox0=\vbox{\obeylines .....text..} has width \hsize?
and not the maximum width of a line in the box...

..i know, i know, i'm impertinent and what i should do is
"read" (read "suffer") the "manual" some more ..............

?  i think you left out a } and anyhow you can't do that in horizontal
   mode!
................................