[XeTeX] XeTeX documentation "initiative"

[Philip TAYLOR]

Michiel Kamermans wrote:

> I never claimed it lined anyone's pockets, or that charging money for it
> is terrible, but it's an authorative work that should have existed as
> "official" documentation for LaTeX in the first place, like any good
> product comes with a good manual.

But it couldn't, because when LaTeX first became mainstream
(LaTeX 2.09), there was no such series of books, there was
(just) Leslie Lamport's /LATEX: a Document Preparation System :
User's Guide and Reference Manual/, which even today sells
for GBP 20-00 on Amazon.  So someone had to write "The Companions",
and if you consider the effort involved in doing that, as well
as the effort involved in developing LaTeX2e from LaTeX 2.09,
I think you will agree that the investment in time must have
been very considerable.  So it seems to me that it is not
unreasonable for those who wrote the Companions to seek to recoup
some of the writing and development costs by charging a reasonable
sum for copies.  Does that seem unreasonable to you ?

** Phil.