🚀 go-pugleaf

nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) writes:
>In article <1991Nov4.052817.14034@wpi.WPI.EDU> entropy@wintermute.WPI.EDU (Lawrence C. Foard) writes:
>>I recently watched a grad student pulling his hair out when he reached the
>>limits of the Mac program he was using, he kept wishing he had used Latex, if
>>he had used Latex it would have taken a while to learn, but would have saved
>>weeks in the end.

>I bet he could have gotten rid of those limits by switching to another Mac
>program too - and it would have taken less time to learn.  But that misses
>the point.  You can probably teach that grad student out to use latex, you
>aren't going teach my parents, or a secretary, or the manager in administration.
>They don't give a damn if it takes longer than on Unix, because they can
>do it on a Mac, and therefore they don't *need* Unix.

Also, you can run LaTeX on a Mac just fine. There are at least three
MacOS TeX implementations (OzTeX, which is free, and two commercial
products), and you can run the standard Unix TeX or CTeX distributions
on A/UX. I've run into lots of people who were pulling their hair out
because they'd hit the practical limitations of fig, or troff, or any
number of other unix programs; they'd have saved weeks by using other
tools. Does this make unix bad? Does it make fig or troff bad? Of course
not; it just means they picked the wrong tool for the job. TeX is
absolutely invaluable for certain tasks, and it's a major mistake for
others. The fact that one Mac word processor has limitations that TeX
does not have doesn't indict either the Mac in general, the idea of
standard interfaces, or even the specific word processor, it just means
the person made a bad choice from the available tools.

--John

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
John L. Coolidge     Internet:coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP:uiucdcs!coolidge
Of course I don't speak for the U of I (or anyone else except myself)
Copyright 1991 John L. Coolidge. Copying allowed if (and only if) attributed.
You may redistribute this article if and only if your recipients may as well.