On 4-8-2011 21:19, Orchid XP v8 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.
>
> Oh, I'm sure a few of the things I couldn't figure out how to do are
> actually hidden away in some command or other that I didn't spend long
> enough trying to find. But anyway...
>
>>> 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.
>
> Riiiiight. Tell me, how do I

Use your brain?

>>> 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.
>
> TeX does not "understand" colour or graphics.
>
> Instead, people have created various packages with insert "specials"
> into the output DVI file, together with programs which interpret these
> specials to generate the appropriate output.
>
> After many years of development, it has now reached the point where this
> kludge mostly works OK. The graphicx and color packages automatically
> detect which backend is in use and generate the correct specials. My DVI
> viewer supports the "dvips" specials, which is what graphicsx and color
> default to producing, while PDF-TeX has special drivers so that it works
> out of the box as well.

indeed. Lots of packages to handle the most diverse needs. A reasonable 
on-line index and books with examples.

> The system is still fragile, however. Literally, the colour changing
> commands are classified as "fragile" LaTeX commands, and you're supposed
> to use /protect and so forth. If you, for example, change colour in a
> section heading, that works fine in the section heading, but breaks in
> the table of contents and page running headings.

If you mean that you wanted to change global behaviour in a heading, you 
deserve nothing better than a broken output.

> Basically, TeX has no idea what you're trying to do, and the various
> packages and drivers are desperately trying to work around the problem
> to make it "look like" the system can actually handle such things.
>
> Oh, and I forgot to mention hyperlinks. But then, TeX is for /printing/,
> primarily, so that's excusible.

I think I have even seen those.

>>> 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.
>
> Sure. In theory.
>
> Now suppose that for some reason I wanted all the document to come out
> in a different typeface for some reason. The body text, section
> headings, table of contents, figure captions, everything. Do you have
> any idea how intractibly difficult that is?

Bloody easy. My theses was in Garamont (IIRC my student decide that 9.5 
points would be ideal). Noticed that too late in the process to change 
it to something

> Fortunately, LaTeX has such nice defaults that you don't often /need/ to
> change anything. Which is very, /very/ fortunate, because it's hellishly
> hard to change stuff if you actually want to.
>
>> 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.
>
> See, what you just said there is "Word sucks". Which is true, but isn't
> my point.
>
> Try writing a big HTML document. Now by applying some CSS to it, you can
> utterly transform it. Don't believe me?
>
> http://www.csszengarden.com/
>
> Click a few of the stylesheets. Watch the entire page radically
> transform instantly. TeX can't do that. (Recent versions of Word almost
> can... but don't expect it to work properly.)

?? LaTeX can, haven't used plain TeX enough to have noticed any 
instances where it didn't work. Unless instantly is your operative word. 
Nothing is instantly in TeX, it was designed not to. Just as POV-ray btw.

>>> Oh, and don't try debugging it.
>>
>> If you want to debug TeX
>
> I have never found it necessary to do that, and I doubt I ever will. TeX
> may be old and crufty, but it's reliable as hell.
>
>> If you mean debugging your text or layout, that is more simple than in a
>> wysiwyg editor.
>
> The page breaks look just fine. Then I write some more text, and the
> page breaks move. Wuh?

Yes, what did you expect else? Somewhere I have this nagging feeling 
that you try to treat TeX as a something similar to Word. Just a program 
to convert raw text to nice output.

>> 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.
>
> Do you have any idea how much trouble I had trying to get it so that any
> text put inside a "tabbing" environment comes out green? In the end I
> was forced to give up. It just WILL NOT work consistently.

You mean messing with the standard tabbing environment or when creating 
a new green environment.

> If this was HTML I was talking about, changing the colour of one block
> of text would be laughably simple. But TeX just can't handle it.

Correction: you can not handle it. If I understood what you wanted to 
accomplish, I might feel tempted to try.


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

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