Not sure which is worse, the initial insult or the political obfuscation of trying to provide damage control to said initial insult...
Jeme A Brelin wrote: > On Thu, 2 Apr 2009, m0gely wrote: > >> Jeme A Brelin wrote: >> >>> On Wed, 1 Apr 2009, John Jason Jordan wrote: >>> >>>> I am not smart enough to learn TeX. >>>> >>> Then why on Earth do you think you have anything worthwhile to add to >>> world literature in writing a book? >>> >> Wow. Just wow. And no books were ever written until $SomeTeXApp was >> created to write them with? All authors out there are their own >> publishers as well? What an arrogant comment. >> > > There has been a misunderstanding. > > My comment was intended to show that John is, in fact, "smart enough" to > learn anything he'd like. If he can write a book, he can write it in > LaTeX. > > I'm sure he meant the line as some kind of self-deprecating humor, but the > humor is there to distract from the strange willfulness that is preventing > him from learning the best way to do the thing he wants done. I mean, > InDesign? For a whole book? That's just silly. It is very much like > pasting things up with wax, but we now have computers that do these > tedious tasks for us so we can concentrate our brain power on things the > computer cannot do (like, you know, generating the sentences that go on > the page). > > John says he can't imagine writing without seeing *exactly* what the page > will display as he's writing. The problem here, of course, is that any > change in the way the information is presented means John has to revisit > every page and lay it all out again. With a proper separation of > presentation from content, a single change in the class definitions > changes the look of the entire book from cover to cover. Of course, he > also misses the dynamic referencing of chapters, formulae, and charts. > When John wants to add or remove a diagram, he has to go back and renumber > all of his diagrams. Heaven forbid he should decide to move an entire > chapter -- now he has to go back and adjust the content and layout of each > page that referenced the headings, charts, figures, and formulae in that > chapter and, potentially, subsequent chapters. It's a fucking mess. > > Larry Wall's concept of "false laziness" applies here in spades. > > >> He mentioned he put time into learning about it. It didn't click with >> him. It's too bad you felt it necessary to precede your otherwise civil >> reply with a remark like that. >> > > I think you're projecting a whole lot. I don't believe John has put any > time into seriously considering using LaTeX for his book project. He > wrote that he "suspects" there aren't classes for the formulas he would > like to construct. Here's the first hit from Google: > <URL: http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/clmt/latex4ling/ > > > J. > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
