I daresay we have missed the point here. We are in fact missing the tongue-twister acronymn WYSIWYG (What-you-see-is-what-you-get). If you can resist the temptation of that instant gratification of seeing the final output as-you-type.
I would say that TeX is ideal for long documents like books or novels. Here consistency is the key. However for the vast majority of day to day office work, documents are often formatted and reformatted till the 'Aha!' feeling comes.
I must say that after using MS Word (and other word-pocessors) for a long time, it took me many iterations to produce a whitepaper in TeX. I'm sure this effort will be reduced to nothing when I'll make a similar paper, but I'm sure it would have deterred the first-timer. Yet, I know of many professors who would be so used to TeX that they would take screen-shots of PDF documents to present them on a ppt:)
You cannot always blame Word for being misused or for badly sructured Word documents. Its the same old case of any product that is easily accessible a large user base. I'm sure you can abuse TeX just as easily.
Maybe search technology has changed a lot since Kuth days. If one cursorily glances through the last coupla journals on Information Search and Retrieval, one cannot help the heavy influence of PageRank (Google's own technology). Thankfully the algorithm is well known.
On the flip side, Critics have often asked wheather such algorithms be published? The bloggers have demonstrated that even Google rankings can be rigged...
Personally, I would choose the open architecture philosophy, due to parallels with the ideas of Bruce on cryptography. A peer reviewed system is always better than a closed proprietery system.
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I daresay we have missed the point here. We are in fact missing the tongue-twister acronymn WYSIWYG (What-you-see-is-what-you-get). If you can resist the temptation of that instant gratification of seeing the final output as-you-type.
:)
I would say that TeX is ideal for long documents like books or novels. Here consistency is the key. However for the vast majority of day to day office work, documents are often formatted and reformatted till the 'Aha!' feeling comes.
I must say that after using MS Word (and other word-pocessors) for a long time, it took me many iterations to produce a whitepaper in TeX. I'm sure this effort will be reduced to nothing when I'll make a similar paper, but I'm sure it would have deterred the first-timer. Yet, I know of many professors who would be so used to TeX that they would take screen-shots of PDF documents to present them on a ppt
You cannot always blame Word for being misused or for badly sructured Word documents. Its the same old case of any product that is easily accessible a large user base. I'm sure you can abuse TeX just as easily.
...(with a greedy look) hmm, I see many IPR infringements. Makes hard to decide from where to start? (Echoes of a Devilish laugh fading out)
Maybe search technology has changed a lot since Kuth days. If one cursorily glances through the last coupla journals on Information Search and Retrieval, one cannot help the heavy influence of PageRank (Google's own technology). Thankfully the algorithm is well known. On the flip side, Critics have often asked wheather such algorithms be published? The bloggers have demonstrated that even Google rankings can be rigged... Personally, I would choose the open architecture philosophy, due to parallels with the ideas of Bruce on cryptography. A peer reviewed system is always better than a closed proprietery system.