[Tugindia] LaTeX in schools
David Kastrup
dak at gnu.org
Tue Apr 8 18:52:19 CEST 2003
"Sridhar M.A." <mas at uomphysics.net> writes:
> On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 02:06:54PM +0530, LinuxLingam wrote:
> >
> > and Sridhar, which school./college students do you mention, and where?
> >
> Dept. of Physics, Mysore University. Recently, I had been to another
> University where I introduced the facilities of TeX (basic) and friends
> and won over many youngsters.
>
> Our students, a majority of them from rural background, had there
> first exposure to computers at M.Sc. If it surprises anybody, that
> is the ground reality here. I would the percentage of `computer
> unawares' at 70. With that background, I _feel_ emacs+auctex would
> be a very steep curve to climb.
With the current graphical interfaces, not too bad. However, the
system administrator should make sure that the default settings and
activated packages for a beginner are sensible (AUCTeX, RefTeX,
preview-latex enabled, configured for document autoparsing and
working together). While just using what is there is made easy,
installing, configuring and activating the stuff is indeed a bit much
to demand.
> > incidentally, KTexMaker2 has morphed into KILE, and the latest
> > version of KILE is awesome. demoeing this software to students
> > and those testing the TeX waters leads to higher success, in my
> > experience
>
> I am impressed by kile. Any day, I am comfortable with vim.
Some interfaces are outgrown at some time. Just make sure that the
pupils have available (and know about) a good selection of choices
where this is reasonable.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
UKTUG FAQ: <URL:http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html>
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