[XeTeX] [tex-live] Future state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[George N. White III]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 5:57 AM, Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)
<P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk> wrote:
> Mu EUR 0,02 :
>
> Chris Travers wrote:
>
>> A couple things I'd point out.  TeX makes it possible to create
>> beautiful books.  LaTeX makes it possible to create beautiful books
>> easily.
>
> but encourages users to create ugly ones.
>
> Why do I say this ?  Well, a user wishing to typeset a book
> using TeX has to /think/, and, having thought, will almost certainly
> come up with a better design than LaTeX offers out of the box.
>
> A LaTeX user, on the other hand, will -- until he or she becomes
> sufficiently skilled and informed to know better -- almost certainly
> just use one of the canned styles based on Computer Modern with
> excessive white space that LaTeX provides by default.

This is a key issue -- to get a larger pool of people passionate about
making beautiful books you have to start by showing them the
difference.   I see many young people who are passionate about their
clothing and am surprised at how many actually want to design their
own clothes.   Clothing designs can be viewed on TV, text artifacts
not so much.   Kids'  school notebook doodles show something about
their interests.   When I was in school the boys doodled hot rods and
girls horses, now I see doodles of clothing (girls) and characters for
video games (boys).

I wonder if part of the problem today is the sheer number of ways we
make text artifacts.  There are tweets, texting, email, blogs, web
pages, essays and reports produced for schoolwork, then papers,
manuals, reports, proposals, resumes, and for some, books.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia