Wither TeX? (was Re:Last typewriter factory in the world shuts its doors)

Wed May 11 21:20:09 UTC 2011

Sorry for the late entry.

At one point I really loved TeX. Well, LaTeX to be certain -- I wrote my own
macros and found it a very nice way to create pretty print versions of
database reports, etc. The DVI creation process was certainly familiar to
those who were used to compiling code. I was a card--carrying member of
TUG. But I always REALLY detested Computer Modern as a font from a graphic
design PoV and I could never wrap my head around Metafont.

Having said that, for better or worse, we're in a world in which HTML5 will
soon predominate, and with the exception of math formatting IMO TeX has
outlived its usefulness. (And whether I'd call TeX books "beautiful" is an
eye-of-the-beholder thing IMO.) TeX had such a steep learning curve that it
was hard to learn other publishing tools in parallel, leading to "if all you
have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" syndrome. And, of course,
it didn't help that only a handful of publishing houses would accept TeX
formatted manuscripts.

As I make a personal transition into ePub for book work and away from the
printed word, I start to think of TeX as I do Fortran ... functional in
their day and absolutely necessary in the evolution of the craft, but there
are now better and easier ways to get there from here. TeX/Metafont preceded
Unicode and OpenType and Dublin Core and MathML and ePub and CSS, all
standards which have received widespread support from both toolmakers and
content producers and arguably serve their needs better.

By contrast, the DVI paradigm has had little room to evolve. It's ill-suited
to environments designed to give users real-time control (ie, real-time font
resizing). The concept of user control (even to the point of choosing a
different font should they choose) is a horror to TeX document producers (as
well as to most InDesign, Scribus and even MS-Word users). But it's a coming
phenomenon that publishers ignore at their risk. In the kind of text-heavy
environment which describes most TeX-produced books I've seen, the
publisher's need for exact control over style is even less compelling than
in graphic-intensive settings (unless you're doing poetry, which doesn't
seem like one of TeX's strengths anyway). The value of the very same
document file being usable on a PC, tablet or 4" mobile screen while
maintaining readability is something Knuth didn't consider, but it's
critical now for a growing number of documents. These days reflowable text
is far more in demand than the world's most meticulous hyphenation
algorithm.

Yes, TeX is a great typesetting system. But the world doesn't need
typesetting the way it used to, and at its heart TeX is hostile to the
Internet generally and user-controlled formatting specifically. If TeX was a
niche in the best of times -- barely known outside of the realms of math and
physics academia -- what does that make its status now? Probably on the same
plane as direct-to-disc audio recording -- the best technology in a rapidly
declining field.

- Evan

On 27 April 2011 22:21, Peter King <peter.king-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 09:19:46PM -0400, William Park wrote:
>
> > By the way, what tools do professionals use nowdays?  TeX is the only
> > tool I know, but I doubt if people use that.
>
> TeX, and in fact, plain TeX. I produce critical editions of texts with it.
> So do many scholars. I have seen editions in English, Latin, Greek, Arabic,
> and Hebrew, all set with TeX.
>
> Math journals are well-nigh universally set in some version of TeX (usually
> with AMSTeX). Cambridge University Press typesets its "Companion" series
> of volumes using LaTeX. And so on.
>
> If you want high-quality typesetting and beautiful books, TeX is still a
> major player. The things it does well (most things), it does extremely
> well,
> a testament to Donald Knuth. It does show its age in spots, and there are
> several competitors for "successor" status: XeTeX, for instance. But plain
> TeX can still be set up to do just about anything, since it is not so much
> a typesetting program as it is a typesetting programming language. People
> can do simply *amazing* things with it.
>
> --
> Peter King                              peter.king-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
> Department of Philosophy
> 170 St. George Street #521
> The University of Toronto                   (416)-978-4951 ofc
> Toronto, ON  M5R 2M8
>       CANADA
>
> http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/
>
> =========================================================================
> GPG keyID 0x7587EC42 (2B14 A355 46BC 2A16 D0BC  36F5 1FE6 D32A 7587 EC42)
> gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 7587EC42
>

-- 
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gtalug.org/pipermail/legacy/attachments/20110511/32d5e016/attachment.html>