[XeTeX] XeTeX documentation "initiative"

[Khaled Hosny]

On Wed, Sep 08, 2010 at 05:32:56AM -0700, Michiel Kamermans wrote:
> 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
> =)

I can't say any better, the lack of free, authoritative documentation has
bugged me since the first day I used TeX, I couldn't even buy the books
by then since no local book store have such titles (online book stores
were not an option). I actually got my hand on a copy of the TeXbook for
the first time just few weeks ago.

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team
 Free font developer