On 4-8-2011 17:02, Invisible wrote:

I'll leave correcting you on several EMACS mistakes to the others. I 
just want to point out that you apparently have been looking at an 
*implementation* (under windows?). You should not confuse that with the 
/idea/ EMACS.

But with regards to TeX or LaTeX

> Maybe it's "the best" in the same way as TeX. The output of TeX is quite
> simply the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Nothing else even comes
> remotely close to looking this damned good. Which is just as well,
> because otherwise TeX would have been nuked from space long ago. The
> /output/ is delightful. The /input/ is the stuff of nightmares.

It isn't. It is more straightforward than e.g. Word. Everything you need 
to know is in plain sight.

> For TeX
> is basically a PDP-era text macro expansion system which also houses a
> sophisticated constraint-solver for typesetting text. It really doesn't
> handle colour,

It does. No idea how you got that impression.

> it really doesn't handle images,

It does. No idea how you got that impression.

> and it most certainly
> does /not/ handle styling or customisation of any kind!

It most certainly does. Style files are are at the heart of the system. 
As a small comparison: a friend of mine had written her thesis in Word, 
after her text was accepted by the committee she needed 3 weeks of hard 
work to convert it from an A4 draft version into a paperback format text 
that she could submit to the printer. I did it, with the help of a 
student, in one evening. And I had different layouts for chapters 
depending on whether it was published before or not.

> Oh, and don't try debugging it.

If you want to debug TeX, that is relatively easy, all sources are 
available, documented and even published as a book 
(http://www.amazon.com/Computers-Typesetting-B-TeX-Program/dp/0201134373/). 
Moreover Don Knuth has a reward for anybody finding a bug.

If you mean debugging your text or layout, that is more simple than in a 
wysiwyg editor.

If you mean debugging style files or bibstyle files you are correct, 
that is a nightmare if you don't know what you are doing. Simple advise: 
don't touch them.


-- 
Apparently you can afford your own dictator for less than 10 cents per 
citizen per day.

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