[XeTeX] XeTeX documentation "initiative"

[Michiel Kamermans]

Hi Philip,

> I think you will find that the charge for the Companions (rather like 
> the charge for the TeXbook itself) goes to offset the expenses of 
> those developing LaTeX (resp. TeX) rather than lining anyone' pocket ...

I never claimed it lined anyone's pockets, or that charging money for it 
is terrible, but it's an authorative work that should have existed as 
"official" documentation for LaTeX in the first place, like any good 
product comes with a good manual. Just having a noble cause for the 
proceeds is not, on its own, enough to sell something. The typical 
person will justify paying for a book based on how useful the book is, 
and that's the tricky part: if you've never touched TeX before, there is 
no way for you to appreciate how hard the work was that others put in 
developing and doucmenting it. It's just another technology. You just 
see a loose collection of packages and an engine that people claim are 
free and fantastic, and "not as hard as people make it sound", but then 
you discover that as you're trying to use it, it actually IS that hard, 
and you need a $50 book just to explain what a normal person expects is 
already explained in the help files. Which don't exist =)

Of course, you can spend days trawling the internet for free snippets 
that explain the specific problem you're having, and you can post on a 
newsgroup or a mailing list and get help that way, but that shouldn't 
have to be a first recourse, but more of a fallback approach when the 
documentation doesn't cover what you want to do. And, when you're new to 
LaTeX, anything you're trying to do should be in the documentation, 
because you're not likely to do something a large number of people 
didn't try to do before you.

Personally, I'm a big fan of the "free digital form and for-monies book 
form" idea that Bruce Eckel more popular -- I stick to that model myself 
for my own book, too -- where, if the material is useful, people buy the 
book anyway because it's a good book to have. Of course if others don't 
subscribe to that philosophy, no problem. But free digital documentation 
makes everyone's lives easier I think =)

- Mike