Re: Who should use (La)TeX - who is able to use it?

Thanks for the info.
As you may have noticed, I was invited to call it quit.
So, thanks again
Regards
--schremmer

Fernando Pereira wrote:

> On Nov 15, 2004, at 9:52 PM, Alain Schremmer wrote:
>
> > In any case, I doubt that, 25 years ago, people could have imagined 
> > what today's desk computers can do. We were overjoyed with MacWrite 
> > and couldn't believe it when the first Laserprinter came out. In fact 
> > we couldn't believe the output of the Applewriter (?) to begin with. 
> > So, the fact that many people have tried does not seem to me to be a 
> > convincing argument.
>
>
> In the late 70s, places like Xerox PARC and other research labs had 
> very expensive custom personal computers that were functionally 
> comparable with modern Macs, if with less memory and slower. There's 
> *nothing* fundamental in a current OS X environment that is 
> qualitatively different from, say, what was available and possible on 
> a Xerox Dorado in the late 70s, or a Sun or SGI workstation in the mid 
> 80s. Slicker, yes. But all of the critical ideas and techniques, 
> including bitmapped displays, TeX, window systems, and WYSIWYG 
> editors, were already available. I know of several early attempts (for 
> example, at CMU in the mid 80s) to put WYSIWYG front-ends on 
> typesetting systems that failed not because of computer limitations 
> but for the reasons I mentioned.
>
> > Re. "The syntax and meaning of typesetting languages like TeX are too 
> > rich and subtle for simple-to-use visual metaphors". Maybe, I 
> > certainly wouldn't know, but what about a /subset/ thereof? Many 
> > people would be happy to settle for a "lite" version. If only to get 
> > started.
>
>
> Subsetting a language is very hard if the language was not designed to 
> be subsetted. That's why it's so hard to teach introductory 
> programming with professional programming languages like C++ or Java.
>
> > By the way, just before the Mac came out, I used to hear the same 
> > kind of things about why there could be nothing but command language 
> > on 80 character lines and raw dot matrix printers. I know because a 
> > friend and I were trying at the time to get into small press 
> > publishing, couldn't believe it and kept looking. And then there was 
> > Xerox' star system which we couldn't afford and, eventually, the Mac 
> > 128 which couldn't do much of anything but made us wait a bit more 
> > and the Mac 256 we bought a couple of.
>
>
> That might have been the case for the general public, but those of us 
> who had the luck to use early Xerox D machines, MIT Lisp machines, and 
> Sun and SGI workstations as part of our work around that time had a 
> totally different experience.
>
> -- F
>
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