From: rab@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU (Richard Alan Brown) Subject: Re: Linux - the future? Date: 4 Nov 1992 08:55:56 +1100
Hmmm, just to add my meaningless .02c to the discussion
My wife wrote her final year thesis using a LaTeX/emacs.
Her degree was in Interior Design, not exactly a prime
candidate for using LaTeX/TeX. She coped with the manual
very well, produced a beautiful piece of work, and used
inserted postscript output from Autocad for schematics
and site plans. I had a good look around, and there was
no package which came remotely close to handling the variety
of graphics formats needed, as well as the ability to
alter the document style at a whim. Sure the learning curve
was a little steep, but she was learning to handle DOS at the
same time (aak). I agree that TeX is a little tough to use
as an end user (whatever that is :) ) but LaTeX is a good
alternative, and, as I have found out in the process of writing
my PhD using LaTeX, it is the *only* document typesetter
which does mathematics properly (yes I've seen commercial
packages which claim to do maths.. but blech..)
Wasn't it Donald Knuth who said that the real meaning of WYSIWYG
is What You See Is All You've Got?
Alistair (wonders about the use of wives as software user-friendliness
benchmarks) Scott
afs@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au