Do you mean like Scrivener on the Mac?
I don’t know. I tried Context, then TeX, than went back to
Context. Now also Metapost. Sorry for beeing biased, but I really
like the programer approach to computers.
What, in any case, constitutes a universal layout approach? Does
one exist? (...)
I don’t think we need something universal. But there is a lot of
common guidelines for most things. For instance, text, music,
chess boards and pictures all have to fit or fill their place in a
page, and all can have a common main font to be used.
Yet he (...) sees the value of maintaining a knowledge base that
is predictable when it runs on a program that can pass the trip
test.
Actually, I’m trying to show my dad he can trust a computer to
typeset his class notes, if we use the right tools (i.e., Context
plus Metapost instead of what was used for his books in the 90’s,
when just a small change would ruin everything). But I’ve just
used ‘ϕ’ in a math formula for one of his papers and Context
silently ignores it. I’m sure there's a good reason for that. But
TeX is predictable when you write a default TeX style document. If
you leave it, you have to understand a lot of hidden issues, and a
dummy user like me will never know if all of them have been taken
care of.
Lose that for the sake of innovation, and you can lose real
knowledge. And what shall we say for troff, which still
possesses an arcane sort of longevity?
Troff? I really miss the days of my old TK3000 text editor back in
the 80’s. It's great to use 80% of your time thinking about what
you want to write and 20% about typesetting. Today it's 4%
writing, 2% typesetting and 94% looking over thousands of pages of
wiki documentation. I still think Context is really great, but
I’ll never try to do something that’s not done in a default
installation again. Or try to understand why sometimes [n=x] works
but [n = x] doesn’t.
(...) you can be creating documents for all the world to see
even if you are out in the bush with a generator and mosquito
netting.
I wrote my résume a few months ago, and sent it to a few
companies, just to know a lot of time later that most of them
could not open it, since it was a PDF revision 1.8 instead of 1.3
(or something like that).
So TeX's stability has the interesting potential side effect of
giving a voice to the voiceless. Our cast-off hardware becomes a
window for freedom of speech and expression, (...)
Sure. I would like to have something simpler than TeX, not more
complex or hardware eater.
There are places where people still go outside to relieve
themselves, (...)
Like myself :)
Some folks think abstractly and can whack out macros like Paul
Bunyan chops wood. Some think visually (...)
I can only think abstractly. But TeX macros are a lot less
abstract than they could be. I believe DEK says they were never
supposed to be used the way they are.
DEK (...) brought all his respect and research regarding
longstanding, tried and true typographical traditions to his
writing of TeX.
Sure. You can’t miss that even if you understand nothing about
typesetting (like myself). After using TeX for a while, it’s
almost painfull to look at text printed by usual office tools.
Maurício a écrit :
Hi,
Just because I'm curious: how could a typesetting system like TeX
be if it was created today? I've tried google and wikipedia, and
all I found different from TeX is a system called 'Lout', but it
seems dead.
(...)
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