[texhax] latex vs.wordprocessor

[Axel E. Retif]

On Aug 20, 2006, at 2:59 AM, pierre.mackay wrote:

> Axel E. Retif wrote:
>> On Aug 19, 2006, at 4:02 PM, Karl Berry wrote:
>>
>>>    can you help me to list some advantages using LaTeX rather than
>>> using
>>>     wordprocessor? in other word, what is the competitive advantage
>>> of LaTeX ?
>>>
>>> http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Typesetting/TeX/LaTeX/Advocacy/
>>> lists a bunch of articles describing (LaTeX) vs. a word processor,
>>> at various levels of stridency.
>>>
>>> HTH,
>>> karl
>>
>> This page came from a TeX on Mac OS mailing list survey:
>>
>> http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgajpd/Academic/Education/usersoflatex.html
>>
> The thirteenth or fourteenth item down in the usersoflatex survey was
> from someone who thought that the use of TeX was negligible in
> fields such as Classics.  (TeX, not LaTeX, in this instance.)

Yes, she or he says: ``I don't get the impression that it's widely  
used in the Classics community in the U.S.'' But fortunately, the  
very first responder to the survey says: ``AFAIK, (La)TeX is used by  
many linguists (like myself).''

There is also mention of The TeX showcase:

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/

where, about at the middle of the page, you can see some really  
artistic examples.

> I call attention to journals published by the University of   
> California: the
> last twelve years of /Classical Antiquity /and the last six years of
> /Rhetorica,/ both journals produced with TeX, in Latin, Greek,  
> English,
> French, Italian, German, Spanish and, in the case of one article in
> /Rhetorica/, Chinese.  About a dozen monographs from the University of
> California Press were set in TeX, including one in Greek, Latin and
> Arabic.  Small patches of Coptic and even hieroglyphic and linear B  
> were
> set for /Classical Antiquity/.

Really refreshing to know this!

> Care to try that in Word, or even Quark?

Word is out of the question in the publishing world, but Quark and  
InDesign can produce some nice works in some kind of books.

And, by the way, have you take a look at XeTeX?:

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=xetex

> [...]
>
> A sizeable number of Classical scholars in Europe use my Ibycus Greek
> font, which depends on the capabilities of TeX to produce
> polytonic Greek.  California, Princeton, Stanford and the  
> University of
> Washington have published classics/humanities books set in TeX, along
> with others I cannot think of at the moment.
>
> Perhaps we do not blow our horns loud enough.

This is the real point! We have much to do in this area!

Axel

> Pierre MacKay
> Humanist Typesetting and Graphics
>
>> Best,
>>
>> Axel
>>
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