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

[Russell Reiter]

I saw an interesting TV show on the future of the publishing industry.
In that discussion, it was a selection of authors and publishers who
were talking about their various experiences. When they rounded up,
the central idea seemd to be that; as the cost of delivering the
writing to the audience converged with next to zero, so did the value
of the content decline.

All present were bemoaning their decrease in income sources as the
digital transport of ideas takes hold in our collective consciousness.
Fewer and fewer people buy books. I think that soon only those who
must have books, will have books. The overhead in production is too
great and even the space they use in storage will come at a premium.

Thirty years ago a lawyer would charge two to three times what it
costs to convey a house today. Their declining income is based in
part, on their ablility to access POLARIS land records online and as
well use tools like Purview to do a risk analysis of any property.
This used to be done by staff. A forty year search is now done
onlline, not days or weeks in the land records office. Property
analysis reports are available in seconds. However these reports
rarely see the light of day on paper. They are mostly viewed on
computer screens and if printed they are audited and shredded,
sometimes in almost the same moment.

To keep this post about linux.

If nroff, groff and troff are part of that set of original computer
type format languages, kind of like the first typewriters, does that
make LateX the Linotype machine of electronic publication?

Russell

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:59 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
>
> 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
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>
>
>
> --
> Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
> Em: evan at telly dot org
> Sk: evanleibovitch
> Tw: el56
>
--
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