Re: The Problems of TeX

Torsten Bronger <bronger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hallöchen!

Rowland McDonnell writes:

Torsten Bronger <bronger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

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).

That doesn't count.

Oh yes it does. Now stop being silly.

You are in the first group.

But you are mis-categorising me.

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

Then these people should start working on *LaTeX* documentation.

Which people are you talking about? Why `should' they do what you want?

Why don't /you/ do something?

Many tutorials start with "LaTeX is a macro package using the TeX
typesetting engine. TeX was developed by D. Knuth ...". This is
awful.

Do many tutorials start out like that? Do they really? Which ones?
What fraction of the total is that number? Do these tutorials not go
on to explain anything useful?

I doubt your data.

Certainly, I find the tendency in LaTeX circles to give an explanation
for why a package was written, and - oh, all the historical stuff is
just annoying. But there's no sanity in complaining about it - the only
sane response to that sort of guff is to tell the people doing it to
stop it.

The editor is not explained at all "because one of the
strengths of LaTeX is that you can choose one". The same for the
distribution.

I'm not sure what you mean by `the same for the distribution'.

But a failure to provide a tutorial on a particular text editor in a
LaTeX tutorial doesn't strike me as a particularly bad thing, given that
one assumes that the typical LaTeX tutorial is aimed as `someone who can
already use a computer', and given that any text editor should have its
own tutorial material.

If not, then the fault lies with the people behind the text editor, not
the people behind the LaTeX tutorial.

*IF* one is writing a LaTeX tutorial to teach people `how to use the
text editor and LaTeX', then of course one needs to provide more than
`just the LaTeX stuff'. But that makes a tutorial less generally
useful.

Using a modular approach, whereby you have separate LaTeX and text
editor tutorials, is a lot more efficient to produce and manage for all
that it's a bit less efficient (but a bit more useful) to learn from
when things are split up.

It's just a shame that so few text editors have even half-decent
tutorials. I, for example, have never managed to work out how to
program Emacs from the documentation. Or Freemacs, back in the dark
ages - both assumed that the user `just knew', as far as I could tell,
`because you just do it the normal way'. Not that I had a clue...

We wrote a (never finished) tutorial for Windows. Of course we
received emails saying, "Why only Windows? Just drop two sections
and your fine tutorial is platform-independent!". Sigh.

<shrug> Alternatively, open it up so that `other platforms' can be
fitted in.

I see no sanity in `just drop two sections and it's platform
independent'. If that's the case, distribute it with all information
and those `not using Windoze' can get the benefit of the platform
independent stuff whether or not the Windoze-specific stuff has been
left in.

In Germany, the books that are recommended most are just *huge*.

Huge books are fashionable these days. I don't know why. It does
strike me that very big books have more shelf presence and so making
books physically large is probably just a marketing ploy.

This fashion for big books has led to some authors writing books that
are too long for the ideas in them, I've noticed.

Very popular is a book by Prof. Storm at the moment. We read it in
the local user group and were utterly disappointed, all of us old
stagers. What's the point in a one-page table showing all nested
markup combinations that the NFSS offers?

Without seeing it, I couldn't possibly comment.

Who's really insterested in breaking up ligatures?

<puzzled> There are some ligatures which TeX constructs
inappropriately. There are examples in the books of occasions on which
one must take charge or the results are awful. It's one of the
downsides of having the automation that TeX provides.

Is the
possibility of writing the umlaut ä as "a in order to gain
portibility really interesting in the year 2008?

To gain long term archiving stability, the chance to do that is very
useful, I would say. Only people who have no thought for the future,
and enjoy running into compatibility problems, would have no interest in
such things, I'd imagine.

[...]

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.

But it must also be enforced.

<shakes head sadly>

But nothing should be enforced, and this sort of thing certainly cannot
be enforced.

It is not enough to upload a nice
documentation on the net.

No, it's got to be advertised and distributed so that people use it.

There will be many LaTeX spindoctors who
turn down documentation that deliverately hides a lot of features
and simplifies some facts drastically.

Why the derogatory term `spindoctors'? Who are you trying to denigrate
here? And why?

I really cannot think what you're on about. LaTeX documentation is
written. Some of its used. The choice of what to read is up to the
individual.

Spin doctors do not exist in the LaTeX world. They exist in the world
of politicians and journalists and the like.

Additionally, there still is
this huge amount of existing documentation.

Indeed there is - what of it? It's very useful. It's available.

And last but not least, there is this odd masochism of beginners to
want to know everything, bringing themselves into deep trouble
eventually.

Some beginners *should* sit down and inhale the TeXbook in a single
weekend. They tend to turn into TeX wizards in short order. This is
all good.

In the LaTeX forum that I follow at the moment, the
question I wait for is "how can I move all my "i" dots 0.2mm
downwards?", coming from people with no typographical knowledge. So
the only way is to prune the features of LaTeX itself, which is not
feasible either.

<puzzled> I do not understand this either. Surely the only sensible
solution to the age-old problem of idiots is the age-old `just try to
explain things to them, and if that doesn't work, sigh and let them get
on with it?'

I don't see why the existence of idiots should mean that a powerful tool
should be made less powerful. Nor do I see why this powerful tool
should be kept away from idiots, given that it's not a powerful tool
that can rip anyone's arm off or kill them or anything like that. it's
harmless, is making a mess of things with LaTeX.

You seem to want to force a single way of using LaTeX on people, and
that's just crazy.

Rowland.

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