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List:       lyx-users
Subject:    Re: Help for paper about LaTeX/LyX and the meaning of life
From:       Manveru <manveru () manveru ! pl>
Date:       2009-03-25 8:32:56
Message-ID: 936b14d20903250132n3ba6554ctf89e36f82ebdf650 () mail ! gmail ! com
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I would like to drop a cent to the whole discussion.

I am terrified reading about way how some publishers treats publication.
Leaving layout to the author is the worst scenario from readers point of
view. Author is responsible for content - the knowledge or scenario - and
only small group of them may have enough knowledge about publishing
standards and the printing culture. Historically the art work connected with
printing has been developed through last six hundred years. Honestly saying,
we cannot reduce that six hundred years to one or second piece of software.
And author concentrated on his/her text cannot design coherent typeset
template. With all the respect to authors and programmers.

Word is a piece of crap in terms of typesetting, there was even time when
moving .doc between computers may influence formatting. In professional
typesetting every glyph on the page has is position, size, angle and so on.
This cannot be solved in program based on simple flow of text on page.

TeX was Knuth's solution to preparation of good quality scientific documents
in scientific world when most popular way of publishing articles was
exchanging poor photocopies of text entered on typewriter machine. You can
still find articles authored by professors like Dijkstra and Wirth scanned
and put in the internet databases. Knuth's TeX solved that very well. So
well, that many scientists do not know/accept other way of writing their
texts than in TeX/LaTeX. Regards, prof. Knuth! Regars, Lamport.

But from artistic perspective, from point of view of all that people that
study art for couple of years before they start designing professionally,
LaTeX products are really far from ideal - it is beacause when you writing
software it is mathematically impossible to cover all boundary conditions
that may happen during typesetting.

All that and previous discussion leads me to the conclusion, that every
publisher preparing books for the market (in does not matter wheter it is a
book for bookstore or some publication for professors), who does not invest
in professional human-driven typesetting do the assassination of the six
hunderd years history of typesetting. Please keep than on mind.

All above is my private opionin and was not my intention to offence anyone.
-- 
Manveru
jabber: manveru@manveru.pl
    gg: 1624001
  http://www.manveru.pl


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