[XeTeX] XeTeX in lshort

[Alan Munn]

On Sep 28, 2010, at 5:42 PM, Peter Dyballa wrote:

>
> Am 28.09.2010 um 22:44 schrieb Philipp Stephani:
>
>> Am 28.09.2010 um 21:16 schrieb Peter Dyballa:
>>
>>>
>>> Am 28.09.2010 um 16:20 schrieb Tobias Schoel:
>>>
>>>> Can we now come back to the beginning problem:
>>>> Which way of creating unicode-encoded .tex-documents to propose  
>>>> in lshort?
>>>
>>> Using GNU Emacs 23.x – the Unicode Emacs (and any of its variants)  
>>> – with its AUCTeX extension.
>>
>> I use the same technology, but I would never recommend it to  
>> beginners.
>
> "Beginner" does not mean the same as "dumb user".
>

No one said that, but beginners are often not as informed about things  
as experienced users.  And the majority of users these days are *not*  
used to using the keyboard for everything, even if there are  
shortcuts.   I used to use emacs, but I no longer do unless I'm ssh- 
ing into my lab server from home. I use TeXShop for latex and  
TextWrangler for coding.  And I'm not a beginner by any stretch of the  
imagination. I agree with Phillip: emacs isn't for beginners and  
TeXWorks just works straight out of the box with no fiddling around.    
Also, emacs isn't an obvious choice for either Mac users: for Mac  
users there are plenty of excellent native text editors available, so  
emacs doesn't really fill a need.

For a document like lshort, recommending TeXWorks seems like a no- 
brainer especially since it integrates all of the basic tools  
(pdflatex, xelatex, bibtex etc) into the editor in an intuitive way.   
So a beginner can almost immediately open a window, type a simple  
document and view its pdf output in one simple step.


> By learning to use accelerating keyboard shortcuts one gains more  
> time to learn TeX dialects and other details. Having to push the  
> mouse around steals ones spare time. (Which you can waste in GNU  
> Emacs as well, since it has hierarchic menus, even when running as a  
> non-windowing programme, and it also has a tool-bar.)

This is kind of like saying if you drove at 140 instead of 100 km/hr  
you'd get to work faster. If your commute is long, it's true, but if  
it's short, it really doesn't make a difference.  There are so many  
other ways we can save/waste time, the idea that using a mouse vs. a  
keyboard is one of them is really a bit of a stretch.

-- 
Alan Munn
amunn at gmx.com