[OS X TeX] Keeping this list healthy

[Victor Ivrii]

On 12/1/06, Bruno Voisin <bvoisin at mac.com> wrote:
> Le 1 déc. 06 à 22:22, Victor Ivrii a écrit :
>
> > Now
> > the good question what reaction expected Bruno when mentioned M$W in
> > this list? It was doomed to generate a discussion between M$-bashers
> > like me and members of PETMU [Peole for Etical Treatment of Micro$oft
> > Users] like you.
>
> No. I expected a discussion on the direction TeX has been taking in
> the past, and on the direction it should take in the future to remain
> useful to people and to escape from the niche status it is currently
> digging itself in. I like TeX very much, and I would feel very sorry
> should it one day pass to antics status (though, I must admit, I
> liked more plain TeX and Textures, which felt more to human scale,
> cosier, than LaTeX and the Unix TeX distros).
>
> The fact that the software taking TeX over in my message was Word
> from Microsoft was immaterial IMO. I was struck, after taking part
> for years in scientific conferences, to realize suddenly that (based
> on one example only, admittedly) TeX was no longer the lingua franca
> of science, and I thought it interesting to share that opinion.


It remains lingua franca in theoretical mathematics.

I must disagree that it is immaterial that M$W is taking over TeX in
adjacent disciplines. Note that it took over practically all
wordprocessors including those vastly superior to it. Where is Word
Perfect? Nisus and Mellel I suspect are completely out of any hope to
expand their base (I must admit Paragon was the maker of its current
misery) .  Do not know Windows wordprocessors. However often I hear
complaints from Windows users that M$ put this or that Windows
software company out of business and the superior software had gone.

The same story with web browsers. I am forced to keep an antique MSIE
5.2 on my MacBookPro because time to time company which maintains a
service site for U_of_T employees (salaries, etc) launches web page
powered by javascript working only with MSIE (then I write a complain
to vice president of the University and they fix it (on the first
instance they tried to argue but ...) The problem is that M$ and many
M$ users outside of mathematical community employ extremely aggressive
tactics and they often enjoy arrangements harmful by Mac, Linux etc
users.


>
> Ironically, I find that the way you interpreted this message in terms
> of Microsoft, not TeX, illustrates very well how being too focused on
> MS bashing prevent people from seeing other more relevant issues at
> hand.

When the certain weed takes over many ingenious plants it is not
useful to discuss the ways of these plants, but one needs rather to
think about herbicide killing this weed. So I think it is very
relevant.
                             Victor
>
> Bruno
>
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-- 
========================
Victor Ivrii, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
http://www.math.toronto.edu/ivrii
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