From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] pascal, TeX
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 13 Dec 2001 19:11:16 +0100."
             <3C18EF44.38244A15@strakt.com>
Message-ID: <28533.1008267496@apnic.net>
From: George Michaelson <ggm@apnic.net>
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 04:18:16 +1000
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 355835ba-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025


> And the only way to modify the Bourne shell was to stick with the
> SHELLGOL, because at least it would maintain a consistant style.

Well, thats the *good* way. there are many bad ways. I wonder what
freudian slip made me forget it was an ALGOLoid? Must be memories
of failing to chose that language course at Uni. Co-incidentally
York University had a truly wonderful sculpture collection, and one
piece outside goodricke college is aptly named 'algol' -It seemed to
fit given the Wirth focussed department of that time. (its a two-part
sculpture, algol being a binary star, but it fitted for -60 vs -68)

>
> I think laTeX is the definitive answer to why TeX is a poor
> piece of software.
>
> Write TeX or laTeX is like writing PostSript and I don't want
> to write any of them.  troff, for all it's faults, I prefer.
>

Me too, but as programme chair for AUUG I found I had no choice but
to hack the back-end postscript of the {troff,ms,pdf,tex} sometimes
to get eg page numbering to work. Might have been quicker to pay
a wage slave to re-copy all on a xerox with tip-ex over the numbers
and a golfball selectric to number them again.

-George
--
George Michaelson       |  APNIC
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