[texhax] syllabus (fwd)

[Philip TAYLOR]

Robin Fairbairns wrote:

[snip]

> the typeset documented source, with indexes, comes to something in the
> order of 700pp of a4.  a convenient summing-up might be "they're
> pretty complicated".  which really isn't enough; learning tex is a
> good precursor of learning how to duplicate the functionality of
> latex, but latex has a lot of useful structures embedded in it that
> are useful stuff for the knowledgeable programmer.

There is another way of looking at this : LaTeX carries with it
an enormous amount of "excess baggage" which most users neither
need nor understand.  I have yet to find anything which LaTeX
can do that cannot be done using Plain TeX plus additional
(custom) macros created specifically for the task in hand.

Philip Taylor