Date: Tue, 23 Dec 1997 09:13:57 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Nadav Eiron <nadav@cs.technion.ac.il> Cc: Chuck Robey <chuckr@glue.umd.edu>, Mike Allison <mallison@konnections.com>, Ruslan Shevchenko <Ruslan@Shevchenko.Kiev.ua>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: teTeX, latex, Lyx Books Message-ID: <19971223091357.59631@lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.95-heb-2.07.971222094806.7029B-100000@csd>; from Nadav Eiron on Mon, Dec 22, 1997 at 09:58:43AM %2B0200 References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.971222001438.4983S-100000@picnic.mat.net> <Pine.GSO.3.95-heb-2.07.971222094806.7029B-100000@csd>
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On Mon, Dec 22, 1997 at 09:58:43AM +0200, Nadav Eiron wrote: > > > On Mon, 22 Dec 1997, Chuck Robey wrote: > >> As far as opinion goes, I very willing to be proven wrong. I can easily >> get the mm macros to do what you said above, PLUS >> >> Neatly making lists, embedded lists, lists enumerated automatically with >> letters (upper/lower case both automatically available) numbers, Roman >> numerals, and custom designed bullets. I'm not talking about allowing you >> do do indent, I'm talking about doing it for you, remembering how many >> lists are active for you and at what level, what change to make between >> levels (when you end one sublist and go back to the parent) so that the >> numbers and the numbering system you asked for when you invoked the list >> macro works right. > > Well, LaTeX knows how to nest lists correctly, As compared to TeX? There's no problem in this respect with troff. > and you can (pretty easily) redefine its bullets to whatever you > like. Ditto. > The Hebrew version even enumerates with Hebrew letters... No experience here, but it should be trivial. Now writing backwards may not be :-) >> Same thing for chapters, figures, diagrams, etc. Nothing yo have to >> remember, it does it all. I can force this in TeX, but I can't get it all >> done neatly for me. Same thing for displays, like computer listings, and >> all this stuff is available automatically for the table for contents, >> which I don't have to mark things for, because the macros know I want >> things like that marked. > > Just declare a caption for a table or figure, and it will automatically > appear in your \listoffigures or \listoftables. All sectional units > (chapters, sections, subsections, appendices, etc.) automatically appear > in your \tableofcontents. And, combined with BibTeX it makes citations a > piece of cake (well, almost), which is alone worth many hours in the kind > of work I do. troff will do this too. Admittedly, I didn't like the way it did it, so I wrote my own macros, but they were an order of magnitude more powerful than the macros I was able to get to work under TeX. >> How about 6 different types of standard headers, some pages, some not, for >> for formal papers, all sorts of standard things that I want macros to do >> for me. >> >> Tell me that LaTeX does this all for me, not that LateX allows it, and >> I'll be the first to switch. I think that TeX is great, I just don't yet >> see the neat macro support. > > I might be biased, but I really learned to love LaTeX. It's true that most > of what I write is theoretical CS stuff, and I have probably as many greek > letters as latin ones in it, but I won't trade LaTeX for any WYSIWYG > thingy (haven't tried LyX, but Word is certainly not an option), and troff > and friends are too much of a mess to use if you need to write complicated > math. That may be about the only area where TeX does have an advantage. But I find the fact that you need different names for so many characters a real pain. > LaTeX2e has zillions of packages and add ons that will let you do > almost anything Yes, that's true, too. > without working too hard. But I'm not so convinced about that. Greg
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