Re: The Problems of TeX

Simon Spiegel <simon@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

(Rowland McDonnell) said:

I'd call disabling babel quite exotic.

How so? Once upon a time, Babel did not exist. Even after it was
released, many TeX distributions did not come with it - OzTeX is one (in
the /very/ early days, OzTeX didn't even have Metafont IIRC). I had
never used a TeX format built with Babel before MacTeX turned up, and
soon realised that it gave me a problem in that all my documents were
typeset assuming that the hyphenation language has been set to UK
English.

If your definition of "not exotic" is "everything that was standard x
years ago", you might be right. My definition is more like "what most
people use and want today".

So what you're saying is that anything other than the single most
popular method counts as exotic? That's quite an, erm, exotic
definition.

I just didn't fancy all that typing to put the call to Babel in all my
documents to get the hyphenation I wanted, really.

Creating a new format just to avoid a single line of source code, seems
very exotic to me.

But that's not what I've done.

I've created a standard LaTeX format using standard parts, standard
components, and standard mechanisms to save typing unneccessarily in
/all/ my documents past, present, and future.

The MacTeX distribution is flawed in that it fails to provide the simple
documentation needed for performing that standard job.

What I've done is unplug an unneccessary extention to standard LaTeX, to
make standard LaTeX work in the standard LaTeX way - and you call it
exotic? You cannot see that saving one line of typing in every document
is worthwhile?

Hardly exotic to want LaTeX to carry on working the way it always has
done on any TeX installation I've used in order to save myself effort.

The problem is that MacTeX is very much a `one size fits all'
distribution because it's so hard to make any changes. That is a
mistake.

For the way you use it may be. Maybe other people have other requirements.

The point is that anyone wanting to make simple changes of the sort I
wish to make has a very hard time of it. Anyone whose needs are not met
by the standard distribution is in for an awkward time. And that is
silly because it's purely down to a lack of decent documentation.

CMacTeX is/was based on the same Web2C sources as TeXLive/MacTeX. It
came with documentation that permitted me to work out what I needed to
do to add the extras I'd already added to OzTeX, which came with
documentation that made it trivial to put these additions in place.

So stay with that. No one forces anyone to use MacTeX.

<rolls eyes> MacTeX can do things that OzTeX cannot. It is therefore
worth putting some considerable effort into getting MacTeX set up if
possible.

So decide what you want. Doing the "things that OzTeX cannot" or doing
everything like it was years ago.

You seem to have failed to grasp the idea that I was trying to explain
something to you in order that you might understand.

(But of course I decide what I want. How else? I don't think I've ever
needed anyone to tell me that.)

And it's also sensible to point out the problems I came across in order
that they might be fixed if practical, so that people in future need not
(for example) have to do quite as much individual research to perform
simple tasks such as creating format files.

As someone elese suggested: If you think this stuff is important and
not easy to find, why don't help other people and write some
documentation?

Because I have so far failed to find the information required to do so.
Yes, it really is that hard.

If I come up with anything TeX-y I think might be of general use (even
if it is a bit ropey), then I shove it on CTAN. Tell me, have you ever
made any contribution like that to the TeX community?

Rowland.

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