[texhax] syllabus (fwd)

Philip TAYLOR P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk
Fri Oct 1 11:17:51 CEST 2004



Robin Fairbairns wrote:

[snip]

> the typeset documented source, with indexes, comes to something in the
> order of 700pp of a4.  a convenient summing-up might be "they're
> pretty complicated".  which really isn't enough; learning tex is a
> good precursor of learning how to duplicate the functionality of
> latex, but latex has a lot of useful structures embedded in it that
> are useful stuff for the knowledgeable programmer.

There is another way of looking at this : LaTeX carries with it
an enormous amount of "excess baggage" which most users neither
need nor understand.  I have yet to find anything which LaTeX
can do that cannot be done using Plain TeX plus additional
(custom) macros created specifically for the task in hand.

Philip Taylor



More information about the texhax mailing list