[pdftex] MS Word hell, TeX heaven?

[John Culleton]

On Thursday 13 March 2003 07:11 am, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> If I may play devil's advocate:
> > A big advantage of (La)TeX over Word for large documents is that one can
> > use a file versioning system (such as CVS) to really cooperate with many
> > people, and work on the same files.
>
> I think you'll find that Word users work very well collaboratively;
> they have some excellent software support for annotating documents.
> some people use Word precisely because this sort of support is so good.
>
> > In addition, this cooperation works
> > on every platform, not just Windows.
>
> or Mac.
>
> > Other large-scale advantages are:
> > - scriptable: it's easy to make automatic reports, with high
> >   typographical quality and rich features.
>
> most decent publishing systems allow that
>
> > - scalable: (La)TeX documents can be stored in data bases as simple
> >   text, which adds all the scalability and configurability that
> >   databases bring.
>
> I'd argue that LaTeX is spectacularly bad for storing in databases,
> because of the interdependency caused by macros and catcodes. How
> can you store a fragment sensibly like
>  \emax=\h_a
> when you don't have the definitions for the macros, or know
> that I have changed the meaning of _?
>
> > - searchable: it's easy to search over a big archive of (La)TeX
> >   documents.
>
> no, it isn't, for the same reason as above.
>
> > - perenniality: one can be sure to be able to access (La)TeX archives at
> >   any time in the distant future.
>
> thats an argument in favour of any text format.
>
> which of these advantages is not also true of RTF?
>
> **********
> Of course, I am just being awkward. But I feel a little
> embarassed by fervent declarations that LaTeX is the ultimate
> great and good markup scheme. It is not, for many reasons. It's a
> workable, but increasingly fragile, authoring interface to the TeX
> engine; we don't have to feel ashamed of it, but equally we should
> recognize its limitations.
>
> The 25 years of TeX recognizes the strength of
> TeX-the-typesetting-engine, not LaTeX.....

Amen brother.  I work in LaTeX when a customer gets in trouble and I have to 
bail him/her out. But I prefer either pdfetex, plain or Context depending on 
the job requirements. 

Part of the beauty of TeX is that you can work in it in a way that suits you,
and the job to be done.  I have no problems with mixing a TeXsis macro in with 
a pdfetex job or a Context job. 

I interfaced plain TeX (plus pstricks) with an rdbms for my first major 
project. A little perl code provided the glue.  And I can masssage a TeX file 
using any of the dozens of marvelous plain text handling tools available
to the Unix./Linux user.   There are two key features to my process:

1. Use of plain ASCII text in the construction of the document.
2. Separation of authorship from typesetting and layout, except at the 
most conceptutal level. (e.g., \chapter{} command.)

And now, to breakfast :-)

John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters