Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 12:22:28 +0300 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: Frank Jahnke <jahnke@sonatabio.com> Cc: michaelgrunewald@yahoo.fr, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Equations Message-ID: <20071006092228.GA2185@kobe.laptop> In-Reply-To: <1191621784.2944.60.camel@pinot.fmjassoc.com> References: <1191604254.2944.12.camel@pinot.fmjassoc.com> <86k5q1gs8t.fsf@Llea.celt.neu> <1191621784.2944.60.camel@pinot.fmjassoc.com>
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On 2007-10-05 15:03, Frank Jahnke <jahnke@sonatabio.com> wrote: >On Fri, 2007-10-05 at 23:34 +0200, michaelgrunewald@yahoo.fr wrote: >> I am always a bit surprised that TeX was released in 78 (before my >> birth!) and---despite its algorithms are published---its output >> quality remains unmatched [1] by common programs. Why these programs >> do not apply TeX's strategies to solve their problems? This makes me >> wonder. > > This is a good question. TeX didn't really hit its stride until about > 1989 (with Metafont and the language freeze), and the effort learned a > lot from troff. Nevertheless, I am always struck by how ugly is the > type that Word produces. You can always tell. I've read about how > sophisticated its algorithm for this or that is, but the end result is > terribly inferior to both troff and TeX. > > I don't really know why -- and it extends beyond the hyphenation > algorithm to things like inter-word kerning and type face formation -- > but I just don't like the way Word documents look. Maybe one of these > days I'll look into it. I also find the insistence of the TeX > community to use the dreadful CM font family to be misguided. There's > a reason that the classical fonts are classics. As far as journals are concerned, I think the insistence about CM fonts is usually an attempt to "keep the original style of the journal", and not so much a lack of respect for the beauty of classic font families. Since the first releases of TeX, there have been many interesting developments about font-handling in the TeX world, like the typeface definitions of ConTeXt, and the drop-in packages of LaTeX which allow one to use Palatino, Helvetica, and other classic fonts. This is getting off-topic for the original topic, but I learnt something new (about the LyX wiki), so -- at least for me -- it was worth it :) Giorgos
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