Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!rpi!tale
From: tale@cs.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: CALL FOR DISCUSSION: comp.text.TeX
Message-ID: <TXC7}|@rpi.edu>
Date: 27 Dec 89 18:17:26 GMT
References: <14650@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <2173@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl>
	<6372@wpi.wpi.edu>
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY
Lines: 34

In article <6372@wpi.wpi.edu> markc@wpi.wpi.edu (Mark B. Cohen) writes:
> First, a minor issue.  
>   Are there any flavors of news software that would object to 
>   uppercase letters in a news group name?

As was pointed out right from the very beginning of this discussion, yes.
Or "sort of", depending on what you mean by having software object to
something.  It might not stand up and say, "I find the silly look of
this name to be offensive!" but it won't work anyway.

> Second, a heirarchy issue.
>   There exists the group comp.lang.postscript.  Is it not true that
>   TeX is as much of a language as PostScript?  
>   (Religious flames followup to alt.religion.computers)
>   Even if a group for TeX discussion is to be a split off of
>   comp.text, IMHO, the group should be named comp.lang.(tex||TeX).

Er, this isn't exactly a religious issue.  I am still in the novice
stages of both PostScript and TeX but it does not seem that TeX is
quite the language that PostScript is.  Applications can be written in
PostScript, but all I've seen TeX used for is text (including signs,
symbols and other aspects of general typography) processing.
The general usefulness (or lack thereof if you hate Forth -- _that_ is
a religious issue :-) of PostScript as a programming language in
addition to a text/graphics formatter made it a quite logical
candidate in the comp.lang hierarchy.  Granted, I am not wizardly
enough to know if all of the same things can be accomplished with TeX;
if they can than perhaps comp.lang really is the best place for it.
With my view of the world now, though, comp.text.tex seems to be the
best name.

Dave
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