[texhax] best way to do texbook examples

Hefferon, James S. jhefferon at smcvt.edu
Thu Jul 16 12:55:35 CEST 2015


While I agree with most of what you said, I want to comment on the recommendation of TeXWorks.

> TeXworks is a very simple but very powerful editor for both TeX and LaTeX.

I teach a class (on proofs) where I require students to learn some LaTeX.  In my writeup I recommended TeXWorks, believing the above sentence to be a fair characterization.  My understanding was that TW was the right mix for a person who is learning.

My students quickly reported that there was no "Print".  I found that they are right.  (For example, the thread http://tug.org/pipermail/texworks/2010q4/003143.html addresses it.  That thread is from 2010 but, as I mentioned, the code my students downloaded this spring also lacked that functionality.) Their work-arounds resulted in any number of very strange outcomes, and outputs, and certainly gave LaTeX a black eye in their views, which is the opposite of what I had hoped for.

So I'm afraid that, while simple, I cannot characterize TW as yet powerful enough.  It does a lot of nice things, but you have to be able to print.

Jim

----------------------------------------------------
When in doubt, use brute force.
  -- Ken Thompson



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