From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: quanstro@quanstro.net (erik quanstrom) Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:23:47 -0400 Subject: [9fans] troff macros for typesetting books/longer texts In-Reply-To: <20110322185916.GA4384@polynum.com> References: <20110322184617.GA2190@polynum.com> <20110322184822.GB2190@polynum.com> <32490607a1a7ec830a162035c0ca2219@ladd.quanstro.net> <20110322185916.GA4384@polynum.com> Message-ID: Topicbox-Message-UUID: bef70984-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 >> the Te?book may be authoratative, but it's by no means short. > > You can get started with the very first chapters. And once you stumble > upon something more special, you pick up the book. > > 300 pages without the appendices, and with exercices it's short; and > exhaustive. Compare with books about "LaTeX". i'm going to call this the "latin is easy" theory. cantonese and arabic are much harder to learn. ? > But most of the "difficulties" with TeX come precisely because this is > not "plain" TeX: plain TeX (i.e. the macros from D.E. Knuth) just work > too. But TeX is hidden---see the comments I received at first: "why do > you want to make a TeX package? People only use LaTeX..." most of the difficulties of te? are because it's a macro language. macros don't scale. dek did a wonderful job, but you just can't paper over the fact that all this wierd macro expansion is going on. - erik