Re: Using LaTeX (was: Re: Writing technical text - THANKS !)
--- Rogério Brito <rbrito@ime.usp.br> wrote:
> Hi, John and others.
>
> On Nov 15 2005, John M. Gabriele wrote:
> > One thing I don't understand about LaTeX/TeX though is why it's so
> > darn big and complicated.
>
> LaTeX isn't big. Well, it does have some core packages, but they surely
> aren't *that* many.
Hmm. It's pretty darn large:
tetex-base: 52 MB
tetex-doc: 39 MB
Also:
$ apt-file list tetex-base | wc -l
5008
> The "complicated" part is probably using "external" packages. For each
> one of these, you indeed have to read its documentation.
What I was specifically referring to in my post was how difficult
LaTeX/TeX is to deal with when you're a developer trying to understand
how the myriad moving parts fit together. Say, if you wanted to build
it from source, or understand how it works, or make a distribution of
the software for some platform that doesn't yet have LaTeX/TeX.
Way back when, I bought some books on TeX and LaTeX and tried to
figure the system out. I'm a fairly smart guy who can follow must
directions if they've been repeated enough times :), but I couldn't
figure out how all the parts of tetex fit together. Yes, there are
docs all over the web on TeX and LaTeX -- reams of them, but many
that I found (sorry, can't quote any links -- it was a while ago)
glossed over the important details that developers of the system
need to know to deal with it as a whole. Either that, or they just
weren't written in a way that I was able to understand. TTFWIW, YMMV.
*Using* LaTeX as an end-user (someone writing a document) OTOH is
great. It's quite easy to use (again, if you're not doing anything
out of the ordinary with it). That said, as a developer, I gave up on
trying to figure the system out. If Larry Wall or ESR or someone with
similar writing/teaching skills came along and wrote a "developer's
guide to TeX/LaTeX from 10-thousand feet", then maybe things would be
different. Dunno. Writing good tech docs is *hard*.
---John
__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com
Reply to: