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

[Evan Leibovitch]

On 11 May 2011 21:31, <phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org> wrote:


> The thing it does not do well, as Evan observed, is flow text
> around images.


Reflowable text means something quite different from that, something that
TeX is even worse at. The capability means that the user can press <CTRL>+
in their reader and the text size bumps up a notch, immediately repainting
itself according to the margins, justification, and other CSS rules are in
place. Even the cheapest ebook reader can enlarge the screen type size on
ePub or mobi/Kindle format ebooks, just like you can enlarge the text on the
browser or email program you're using to read these words. The PDF spec also
allows reflowable text, but very few documents have the feature enabled.

When Howard said:

Donald Knuth's whole point in creating TeX is that he did not like the way
> people were typesetting his documents.  He had no interest in how _you_ want
> his documents formatted.


I think he came really close to revealing the critical flaw in TeX's
faithful execution of Knuth's approach. It presumes that the producer of
content must have full control over distribution and presentation. While
still present -- mainly in the world of fine arts -- such a paradigm has
been largely eradicated by the growth of the web and a generation that gets
most of its information from a screen rather than a sheet. In a word where
users are demanding more flexibility and control over how they consume
content, Knuth's approach is becoming less relevant by the day. Publishers
these days rarely have the luxury of being disinterested in the wishes of
their consumers.

- Evan





> It can be done (see wrapfig.sty), but it requires a certain amount
> of manual intervention to work correctly. And I never did figure out how
> to change fonts, but I'm happy with Times.
>
> It depends on the application. For a one-page specification sheet with
> diagrams and lots of frames, OpenOffice is great. Latex would be a
> nightmare. Conversely, for an academic text (Analog Circuit Design, 1100
> pages, http://www.syscompdesign.com/index.html) I found Latex just
> excellent in things like indexing, cross-referencing and generally
> debugging the manuscript.
>
> Oh, and you can use whatever editor you like...
>
> Peter
>
> --
> Peter Hiscocks
> Syscomp Electronic Design Limited, Toronto
> http://www.syscompdesign.com
> USB Oscilloscope and Waveform Generator
> 647-839-0325
>
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
>



-- 
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56
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