Xref: utzoo comp.text:6519 comp.text.tex:201 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!qucdn!gilla Newsgroups: comp.text,comp.text.tex Subject: Re: Why learn Tex? Date: Wednesday, 28 Feb 1990 23:48:29 EST From: "Arnold G. Gill" Message-ID: <90059.234829GILLA@QUCDN.BITNET> References: In article , melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) says: > >What advantages are there in learning troff or Tex? Aren't their days >numbered? Everyone in the non-Unix world is using word processors. >Why aren't Unix people? I read in a book about Unix(that black >paperback book from Byte) that the major disadvantage in using a word >processor was that it couldn't handle large documents. It seems to me >that this limitation has been overcome. TeX does not seem to be a word-processor to me, but rather a document preparation package. If you insist on writing straight text, I agree that TeX is, in general, overpowered and perfectly good results can be obtained from any word-processor or even text editor. However, where TeX excels is in the addition of chemical/mathematical/special language symbols. It figures out sizing by itself, reformats pages/equations/paragraphs, automatically calculates indices, footnotes, table of contents, figure numbering, etc. The output from TeX is close to being beautiful (IMHO). The only drawback is a bit of a problem with the learning curve, and the fact that one cannot see one's results instantly - but there are many dvi previewers out there. And with the addition of including postscript graphics files into TeX, even that difficulty has been alleviated. I would say that TeX is a scientific document preparation programme. For what it is designed for, nothing else compares (though something like ChiWriter is arguably close). ------- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- | Arnold Gill | | | Queen's University at Kingston | If I hadn't wanted it to be heard | | BITNET : gilla@qucdn | I wouldn't have said it. | | X-400 : Arnold.Gill@QueensU.CA | | | INTERNET : gilla@qucdn.queensu.ca | | -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-