[Leica] Fair enough

[daniel.ridings at edd.uio.no (Daniel Ridings)]

On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, David Mason wrote:

> The capabilities for producing and printing multiple script has always
> been there with computers but it always took more work... *just like
> with typewriters*. If there was some sort of learning experience with
> changing ribbons and making footnotes with typewriters I would
> challenge you to do the same thing using TeX on any classic or modern
> computer.

TeX is what I used ... and TeX did not have fonts available for Greek for
years and years. So it was not always there. It finally got there. TeX and
LaTeX were just great, once the fonts came along.

> The real issue to me is that when people refer to "word processing"
> right now they are referring to MS Word. When we allow one company to
> control the toolchain as much as MS does we will always suffer when we
> need to do something outside of their world view.

I still use vi/Emacs and LaTeX. Don't have that problem (no virus macros
to worry about either :-) )

> The amazing thing was that there were already easy-to-use word
> processors available that could do just that but they were not on
> Windows :)

Don't know about that. I'm closely associated with people writing Arabic
and they've gone the non-Word route. It can get pretty messy when these
little companies don't really keep up, and they're not using PC:s
(anymore).

Best,
Daniel