Xref: utzoo comp.text:6528 comp.text.tex:217 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucsd!nosc!crash!simpact!jeh From: jeh@simpact.com Newsgroups: comp.text,comp.text.tex Subject: Re: Why learn Tex? Message-ID: <1000.25ed0048@simpact.com> Date: 1 Mar 90 18:58:16 GMT References: Distribution: comp Organization: Simpact Associates, San Diego CA Lines: 65 In article , melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes: > 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. I `sold' my company on using LaTeX for documentation. We've been happy with it for about two years now. We keep looking at Word Perfect, et al, and rejecting it/them. Reasons: 1. "Large documents" means not just many pages but also complex structure. Chapters, sections, subsections, figures, tables, listings, examples, TOC, TOF, TOT, TO*, indexes, bibliographies, footnotes, and cross references between all of the preceding... Word Perfect (WP) can do *some* of what LaTeX can do with this stuff. Not nearly all. 2. TeX input files are plain old Ascii text files. As such they can be prepared on any machine in the company, even if that machine does not run TeX. Under VMS, the Language Sensitive Editor is a great way to use LaTeX; the templates `know' most of the commonly-used structures. For another example, until very recently we were still doing contract work on HP 1000 series equipment. The programmers did the first and second cuts at their documents on the machine they were familiar with, using the text editor they were familiar with. (I wouldn't wish that editor on anybody, but one can get used to almost anything and once you're used to one, switching frequently between it and another editor is a real productivity-killer.) Eventually, of course, the stuff got shipped over to the Tech Pubs group, who use TexTures on Macs. Which brings me to... 3. TeX is non-proprietary and runs *compatibly* under more operating systems than any proprietary word processor I know of. Yes, I know, WP runs under MS-DOS, VMS, Macintosh, and (I believe) various flavors of Unix... but did you know it isn't quite compatible? That the MS-DOS version has features that others don't? (At least so I am told by the Tech Pubs people, who have been researching alternatives.) So, even if you can get your WP files from one machine to another without munging the format, you can't guarantee that you'll get the same output everywhere. This is not a problem with TeX. 4. The "plain Ascii" nature of TeX input has other advantages. For example, it can be generated by other programs. In one document we needed to describe the Ascii/EBCDIC translation provided by one of our packages. Since the translation table was already in the code, nobody wanted to transcribe it into the document format (and track revisions, etc.). It took about half an hour to write a little program to take the table in "C" code and emit a file that could be \input within a LaTeX \tabular environment, so that the document will ALWAYS reflect what the code says. You can play similar games with VMS HELP and LaTeX documents, too. 5. Since TeX is just a program like any other it "plays well" with other programs... like configuration management (CMS under VMS, rcs/sccs/etc. under Unix) and build utilities (MMS, make). In the above example, for instance, a makefile guarantees that when the code changes the doc gets updated to match. I could go on. However, this subject, like text editors, is like a religion. If you aren't convinced now you probably won't ever be. --- Jamie Hanrahan, Simpact Associates, San Diego CA Chair, VMSnet [DECUS uucp] and Internals Working Groups, DECUS VAX Systems SIG -------------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Internet: jeh@simpact.com, | Future shock: A sense of bewilderment or if that fails, jeh@crash.cts.com | felt by those who were not paying Uucp: ...{crash,decwrl}!simpact!jeh | attention. -- Analog (Jan 90)