🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <simon-161192100443@archmac-162.arch.su.edu.au> simon@archsci.arch.su.edu.au (Simon Hayman) writes:
>>If you are talking of actual mathematics,
>> and want to communicate your work to others,
>> you will be very unwise to use anything other than TeX/LaTeX ,
>> as 99% of mathematicians use these.
>
>But why?
>Unless you want to transfer the data as a file any WP program with maths
>capability (inherent or attached via something like expressionist) is fine
>if paper output is all that is needed. And a damn sight easier to use!!

Hmm, yes, easier to use.  But presumably, if you are communicating one
mathematical result to others, you will want to communicate MANY mathematical
results to others (else why read this newsgroup?).  And although TeX has a
steep learning curve, packages like AMSTeX and LATeX aren't really that hard
to use.

The point is that TeX output LOOKS right; it looks like what we read in
journals, books, and nowadays, most preprints.  No other equation editor
that I have ever seen produces output nearly that good.  Now one may argue
that people are overly concerned these days with appearance, that they
should be more concerned with content.  Certainly the content is the only
thing that counts, but since it is so **easy** to use TeX, once you get
used to it, there's not really any extra effort in making it look good.

Besides math papers, all of my problem sets and tests in upper-division and
graduate courses are set in TeX.  So many of our faculty use TeX now that
we got rid of our technical typist, and our secretaries have acquired facility
to type the manuscripts for those few who don't.

I'll tell you what I'd like to be able to do:  I'd like to mix TeX output
with graphics and other text in programs like PageMaker.  If anybody knows
how to do this now, I'd be interested in hearing.  (For example, can this
be done in FrameMaker?)  Blue Sky Research, which created Textures for the
Macintosh, has announced that they're preparing a high-end publishing program
(I hope not so high-end it's not affordable) which incorporates TeX.  The
latest version of Textures (1.5) is blazingly fast; it really is practical,
on my souped-up Mac II, to leave the "preview" feature on, and to see the
typeset output appear on-screen in real-time.  I usually turn this feature
off because it's distracting, and I don't make many TeX errors, but it's
available.  (I suspect it's slow for more than a single page of output.)

--Ron Bruck
bruck@mtha.usc.edu preferred