Re: Controlling (La)TeX

Generally speaking, `Users don't read documentation' is just an excuse
for not providing it used by those releasing software.

I don't think the above is completely right. The part about not
providing
documentation based on an excuse may be correct, but I think it is
also correct that many users tend not to read documentation, and
I think this has always been true, even back in the 1960s. I don't
know
what the ratio is, but some people (I suppose) mostly learn by reading
and
others (I know) mostly learn by trying. Then, like now, we in the
latter group
wrote our programs (on punch cards) without reading the documentation,
submitted it to the computer center, and looked at the results (a
memory dump) to
try to figure out why it didn't work. We did this repeatedly until we
gradually
figured out how [Fortran or whatever] worked, or we asked someone a
question [like asking on c.t.t]. Only occasionally did we look for and
read
a little part of a manual. I suspect more people have always tried
first
than read first, although the ratio may be getting more lopsided in
these
days of point-and-click. (To generalize, many [most?] people don't
read automibile manuals, don't read microwave oven manuals, don't
don't read cell phone manuals, and don't read table saw manuals.
We somehow stumble upon some subset of things that get something
useful done, and that limited knowledge expands very slowly, mostly
when we see someone else do something we didn't know how to do --
similarly we may read about something on c.t.t that we didn't
previously
know about.) People will try what worked in some other environment:
if it works, wonderful; if not, they will do without or ask someone. I
suspect
that details such the interrupt key(s) in TeX versus something else is
seldom
fundamental to a decision to use TeX or not. -- Dave

.

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