[OS X TeX] Who should use (La)TeX - who is able to use it?

[Alain Schremmer]

With all due respect, I would like to disagree some:

Re. Use a Mac. Well, for a long time, there was a money issue. I was 
fortunate enough that I was able to afford the second Mac ever. Not 
everybody was. One could argue, there was in fact a lot of argument, 
about the choice Apple made regarding market share. But ease didn't 
enter since, at the time, Mac's WYSIWYG was a lot easier and more 
pleasant to use than DOS. I will leave it to others to decide what the 
deciding factor(s) were but I recall one of my colleagues scornfully 
speaking of my Mac, by then a IIi I believe, as "this nice toy".

Re. Word as the best solution for them. And why not? At this time most 
probably. With a "lite" combo as I advocate in another response, maybe 
the 95% would begin to dwindle. By the way, did they try Open Office?  I 
haven't because the Mac version the last time I tried was not yet user 
firendly.

Re. Making LaTeX simple enough. I am simply not convinced that it is not 
feasible. I am in fact willing to bet that something like the above 
mentioned "lite" version will eventually come to pass.

Regards
--schremmer

Jan Eden wrote:

>Arno Kruse wrote on 14.11.2004:
>
>  
>
>>Dear members of the list,
>>
>>For years I read the articles which are announced in this list with
>>great interest; I got  many suggestions and a lot of help - please
>>accept my best thanks. But during the last months a worrying feeling
>>was arising more and more, especially when reading the lot of
>>sometimes extremely complicated questions and answers: Is a "normal"
>>user generally capable to use  LaTeX?
>>
>>A "normal" user: I simply think of a person without absorbed
>>interest in: operating systems; typographical rules; installing
>>questions; learning commands; and so on.
>>
>>    
>>
>The most common type of a normal user even refuses to use a Mac, since the learning curve is too steep. Many people tend to stick with whatever system they got to know the first time they encountered computers.
>
>And this is, unfortunately, Microsoft Word on a computer running the Microsoft Windows OS.
>
>I was able to convince two of my colleagues to try LaTeX, and I got another one to switch to the Mac - but the other 95% firmly insist that Word is the best solution for them.
>
>You cannot make LaTeX (or any other advanced typesetting system) simple enough to convert the normal users you seem to refer to.
>
>Best,
>
>Jan
>  
>
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