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Date: Mon, 22 Dec 1997 20:11:29 -0600 (CST)
From: Jay Nelson <jdn@tok.qiv.com>
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To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
cc: Ruslan Shevchenko <Ruslan@Shevchenko.kiev.ua>,
        John Kenagy <jktheowl@bga.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: teTeX, latex, Lyx Books
In-Reply-To: <19971222130017.30553@lemis.com>
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Whoa... I gotta jump in on this. 

So y'all understand the perspective -- I learned to set type with real
lead and tty bell codes. (After that, an enima would be a breath of
fresh air!) I use TeX directly and write my own macros because _I_
want the control. I don't like LaTeX.

TeX is a _typesetting_ system, designed to compose type according to
the best standards established in 450 years of tradition. If one is
not interested in creating well crafted type, TeX is definately not
the way to go. If one is, I haven't seen anything else (available for
free) that will do it.

Troff is very good considering its design goals, but suffers the same
limitations as LaTeX. TeX is infinitely flexible and expandable. The
cost of this power is the learning curve. (I guess it's a bit like
Unix and C ;) Troff was intended for documentation -- not well crafted
books.

And, yes, Knuth's books are definitely _not_ a quick and easy
guide. They do, however, teach you why some of the arcana is important
and are, in fact, the best documentation on TeX, I've seen.

-- Jay

On Mon, 22 Dec 1997, Greg Lehey wrote:

    > On Sun, Dec 21, 1997 at 03:55:16AM +0000, Ruslan Shevchenko wrote:
    > > John Kenagy wrote:
    > >
    > >> Now that I've about got a behemoth of a text processing system
    > >> loaded up. I need to know how to use it!;-)
    > >>
    > >> Anybody got any reccomended books on latex, tex (teTeX), etc.?
    > >
    > >
    > >  1. TeX book by D. Knuth.
    > 
    > Read this and watch your brain turn to mush.  I think it's one of the
    > most useless books I've come across.  It's full of arcania, and
    > instead of telling you what to do, it presents everything as a series
    > of problems.  As if TeX wasn't enough of a problem by itself.
    > 
    >  2. LaTeX users quide by L. Lamport.
    > 
    > This book is better.  But then, so are most books.
    > 
    > As may be evident, I don't like TeX.  It's not for want of trying; I
    > used it exclusively for several years.  Troff was like a breath of
    > fresh air.  Don't take this as a criticism of lyx; I haven't tried
    > lyx, and if it hides the obscenities of TeX well, it could be quite
    > useful.
    > 
    > Greg
    > 

-- Jay