[pdftex] MS Word hell, TeX heaven?

[Sebastian Rahtz]

On Thu, 2003-03-13 at 19:10, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> How can you say that LaTeX is "increasingly fragile"?

I mean that each time a new package comes out,
it increases the chance of conflict. The LaTeX core
is not as good an API to work against as I am sure
Frank would like it to be. 

After all, look at something I do know about, viz
hyperref. It's functionality is regarded by many
as essential, but its implementation is dreadful, as 
LaTeX was not designed to plug in things like that

> For some reason the pointy-heads won't admit
> that 95% of the people using LaTeX are using it for math,
> for which it is not just the best tool, 
> it is the only tool for the job.
so the people using the other systems are simply
figments of the imagination?

> In light of the sad passing of Michael Downes
what??? did Michael Downes pass away????

> One has only to look at the nightmare that is XML
> to see how fortunate we are that Knuthian common-sense
> has imbued LaTeX with its qualities of versatility
> and practicality.

now I know you're in that joke mood, Timothy....

I know its a not a measure used in this world much, but do you know
that it look approximately 18 months from the release of XML for
it to be featured in a TV commercial? did you ever recall reading
one of those business analyses noting TeX as a key technology?
Even if you look at the analysis made of the US government's dependence
on Open Source software, TeX doesnt figure much.

sebastian