Re: The Problems of TeX

Torsten Bronger <bronger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hallöchen!

Lars Madsen writes:

[...]

I my opinion the main problem here is (1) bad templates, and (2)
using tutorials as their LaTeX bible.

You are absolutely right, with both points.

[...]

We as a community has to acknowledge this, and provide better
tutorials.

The problem is that you have two groups of people: Those who like
working with computers and like to program, and those who don't but
just write documents. The first groups develops LaTeX, writes the
tutorials and textbooks, and gives advice; and the second group is
the much larger one.

Your categories are wrong, I think. Far too simplistic to divide the
world into two like that.

Some people who develop bits of LaTeX and write bits of documentation
(me, for example), aren't high-powered programmers (my released code -
and it's all going to get updated one of these days - is crude, and
that's the polite word for it).

Most of the good documentation is written by people who seem to be most
interested in *using* computers to get things done.

So, I'm afraid LaTeX will remain being closer to programming
languages than to desktop applications, especially with its
extremely modular structure.

I think the problem is not that.

It seems to be mostly that those who write the hard code at the heart of
LaTeX still think like the mythical `real programmers' of years gone by:
`if it was hard to write, it should be hard to use'. They appear to
take pleasure in writing documentation that can only be understood by
people who are as clever and well-informed as they are.

Certainly, they write documentation like Unix Man pages - text that is
`optimised' to remove all redundancy and all `unneccessary' information.
So if you want to understand some LaTeX code, you'll not get a lot of
help from its documentation - which will assume you know all about
everything else you need to know, and so on.

On the other hand, most LaTeX users
think of LaTeX as some sort of odd Word and treat it as such. Yet
it isn't, so they get frustrated.

I've observed a development in other communities (most notably the
Linux desktop environments) away from geek-friendlyness towards the
"ordinary computer user" over the last years. However, the LaTeX
community is way to loose and heterogeneous for such an effort, I'm
afraid.

The `LaTeX community' doesn't exist. There are LaTeX communities. But
what you describe as being needed - better documentation, essentially -
does not need a concerted effort by everyone in the community. All it
needs is some people to do the right thing, provide guidelines, write
good documentation, and nudge things in the right direction.

Rowland.

--
Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sorry - the spam got to me
http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk
UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The Problems of TeX
    ... The first groups develops LaTeX, ... Then these people should start working on *LaTeX* documentation. ... Do many tutorials start out like that? ... Huge books are fashionable these days. ...
    (comp.text.tex)
  • Re: The Problems of TeX
    ... The first groups develops LaTeX, ... most interested in *using* computers to get things done. ... Then these people should start working on *LaTeX* documentation. ... Many tutorials start with "LaTeX is a macro package using the TeX ...
    (comp.text.tex)
  • Re: Format building finding wrong hyphen.cfg file
    ... I'm putting together a list of kpsewhich invocations with an explanation ... When you say `LaTeX', what do you mean, exactly? ... A TeX engine with latex.fmt loaded. ... NAME is the abbreviation used in the kpsewhich documentation ...
    (comp.text.tex)
  • Re: Co-developers wanted: document markup language
    ... documentation, or on software documentation. ... "Everyone" says to just use a Unicode editor. ... In LaTeX, you ... semantic markup). ...
    (comp.lang.python)
  • Re: No sound...?
    ... I had the file on a read-only disc image. ... Layout was done by a ... For some jobs with lots of graphics inclusions, LaTeX works out easier. ... All the tools directory contents have their own documentation included ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)