[OS X TeX] overview of what TeX is producing

Jason Davies ucgajpd at ucl.ac.uk
Tue Mar 1 13:30:56 CET 2005


I have been trying to explain exactly what TeX does to people - not the
technical stuff but the principles that it enacts typographically. Does
anyone know of a good source? For instance, I know it calculates the
spaces between the letters optimally. But are there proportions in the
defaults that mean the margins are the right size in relation to text,
in the way that the bottom part of a picture frame is always about 10%
bigger than the top?

in other words, *why* is TeX output so elegant to the human eye?

any answers will help.I am being leant on (as ususal) to justify why I
am not sending people Word documents and have decided to go on the
offentsive (ie giving up on 'it works better for me') and trying to sell
them the idea that they are using an inferior set up There's no hope
that they will adopt TeX - they find Word tricky enough - but I might be
able to convince them that my results justify the means...

cheers
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