[texhax] latex vs.wordprocessor

[pierre.mackay]

Axel E. Retif wrote:
> On Aug 19, 2006, at 4:02 PM, Karl Berry wrote:
>
>   
>>     can you help me to list some advantages using LaTeX rather than  
>> using
>>     wordprocessor? in other word, what is the competitive advantage  
>> of LaTeX ?
>>
>> http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Typesetting/TeX/LaTeX/Advocacy/
>> lists a bunch of articles describing (LaTeX) vs. a word processor,
>> at various levels of stridency.
>>
>> HTH,
>> karl
>>     
>
> This page came from a TeX on Mac OS mailing list survey:
>
> http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgajpd/Academic/Education/usersoflatex.html
>  
>   
The thirteenth or fourteenth item down in the usersoflatex survey was 
from someone who thought that the use of TeX was negligible in
fields such as Classics.  (TeX, not LaTeX, in this instance.)   I call 
attention to journals published by the University of  California: the 
last twelve years of /Classical Antiquity /and the last six years of 
/Rhetorica,/ both journals produced with TeX, in Latin, Greek, English, 
French, Italian, German, Spanish and, in the case of one article in  
/Rhetorica/, Chinese.  About a dozen monographs from the University of 
California Press were set in TeX, including one in Greek, Latin and 
Arabic.  Small patches of Coptic and even hieroglyphic and linear B were 
set for /Classical Antiquity/.

Care to try that in Word, or even Quark?  I don't mean just the content, 
although that is of prime importance.  Try to match the quality of page 
design. 

A sizeable number of Classical scholars in Europe use my Ibycus Greek 
font, which depends on the capabilities of TeX to produce
polytonic Greek.  California, Princeton, Stanford and the University of 
Washington have published classics/humanities books set in TeX, along 
with others I cannot think of at the moment.

Perhaps we do not blow our horns loud enough.

Pierre MacKay
Humanist Typesetting and Graphics

> Best,
>
> Axel
>
> _______________________________________________
> TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
> Mailing list archives: http://tug.org/pipermail/texhax/
> More links: http://tug.org/begin.html
>
> Automated subscription management: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/texhax
> Human mailing list managers: postmaster at tug.org
>
>