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From: Mike Harrison <mph@zdenka.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: AWEB; Enhanced Document Encoding
Date: 1999/03/17
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References: <7bv5nl$8vc$1@plug.news.pipex.net>
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 <7c8tir$nt0$1@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <36ed4e1c.0@pfaff.ethz.ch>
 <7cooqo$mdf$1@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
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Reply-To: Mike Harrison <mph@zdenka.devil.co.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1999-03-17T00:00:00+00:00
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In article <7cooqo$mdf$1@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, Nick Roberts
<Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com> writes
.
'snip'
>
>I have to agree that TeX -- to be completely blunt about it -- really creaks
>these days.  It was designed at a time when even really big computers
>(mainframes) had only a few MB of memory, and were generally batch-mode.
>Nowadays, even cheapo PCs have 64MB as a minimum (seems bizarre to us old
>hackers, but that's progress).
>
>I think it would be fair to say that a lot of the assumptions that the
>design of TeX (and other 'formatting languages') were based on just don't
>apply any more: there is no such thing as batch processing; personal
>computers can reformat and redisplay even a moderate big and complex
>document in (near as dammit) real time; the vast majority of word processing
>users -- for whatever reasons, right or wrong -- won't tolerate having to
>learn a complex language (call it a 'formatting' language if you like, but
>it's effectively a programming language), and many now expect an interface
>which they can just use 'straight off'.  Besides which, TeX is a weird
>language, and some of its 'quirks' are just bizarre.
>
...
>
>-------------------------------------
>Nick Roberts
>-------------------------------------
>
OK, I know this is miles 'off-topic', but:

I still use TeX (or rather LaTeX - which is a little less quirky!) for
letters and serious technical papers, because I just prefer the look and
feel - especially the Computer Modern Roman typeface and because it's
easier to format maths text etc.

I learned to use it many years ago at Inmos, who used it for all tech
documents (including books published by commercial publishers).

Also, I remember when you were lucky to have 16K of memory on a
mainframe ... (memories of living in a shoebox come to mind ;-) ).

------------------------------------------------------------------
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  Change 'devil' to 'demon' for my real email address.

    Mike H.