From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <201112121028.aa27808@salmon.maths.tcd.ie> References: <201112121028.aa27808@salmon.maths.tcd.ie> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:52:18 +0100 Message-ID: From: Rudolf Sykora To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [9fans] troff book Topicbox-Message-UUID: 4e0bff3a-ead7-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 Hello, On 12 December 2011 11:28, John Stalker wrote: > As a thesis advisor myself, though not of this thesis, I would say that > the advice below might or might not be correct, depending on field of > study. =C2=A0I have some affection for troff, but TeX and its progeny rea= lly > do produce much nicer looking equations. =C2=A0In a field where equations > are usually simple and there are only one or two per page there is no > reason not to use eqn|troff. =C2=A0In something like Mathematics or Theor= etical > Physics, where equations can be quite complex and are everywhere, you > really want to use some TeX variant. =C2=A0Using eqn|troff would be like = using > MS Comic Sans for the text. =C2=A0Yes, the content is the same, but the f= orm > would make you look eccentric or incompetent. =C2=A0It's true the few peo= ple > read theses, but that's no reason to piss them off unnecessarily, since > they decide whether you get a degree or not. Funnily enough, I've been trying to write my PhD thesis on Theoretical Physics using eqn|troff. In my life I've read so much shitty work written in LaTeX (i.e. nicely typeset, but ...) that, perhaps, I want to differentiate. And as I mentioned some time ago, writing math in the eqn language is just so much superior feeling for me, especially when typing unicode characters is possible. On the other hand, the truth is that the situation in plan9 troff/gs world is not good. Not good font coverage for math (e.g. bra-ket signs), not a suitable ps viewer, ... Ruda