On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 1:29 PM, David L. Johnson <david.john...@lehigh.edu>wrote:
> On 12/10/2012 02:01 PM, stefano franchi wrote: > >> >> <rant> >> > 8< > >> Such programs [Word and Wordstar] (and still are) were usually very bad >> at typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single formula was >> tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. That was >> prompted D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of professional >> typesetting software for math, not the similar but irrelevant problem in >> word processing program. >> > > Actually, TeX predated Word, and Wordstar (or Wordperfect). People used > to run it on DECs. While there were other math-typsetting (to use the > phrase loosely) PC programs before TeX became usable on PCs, such as Jim > Milgram's "Techprint" which he wrote for Radio-Shack computers with 28K > ram, most of us used a combination of typewriters and hand-written symbols. > A respectable journal would typeset the paper from the typewritten copy, > but a few insisted on "camera-ready" --- literally --- proofs, which > resulted in published papers and books with handwritten symbols. I suspect > that Knuth was reacting to that mess rather than equations in Word. I > typed my own Ph.D. thesis on an IBM selectric, with those interchangeable > golf-ball fonts, going over each line 2 or 3 times. A nightmare. > > I didn't mean to imply Word (or Wordstar) were used before TeX---just that Word-equivalent software and/or mechanical devices (i.e. typerwriters: I wrote my thesis on a Olivetti Lettera 22. And I was an innovator: my adviser would only handwrite and had a secretary type his books) were the common first step for both scientists and humanists. The publishers then took the second and final step using different tools (and sometimes resorting to handwritten symbols. I remember well that many of may symbolic logic books in college contained such horrors). But whereas publishers usually did a good job with humanists' texts, they often did a terrible one with formulas. Hence, TeX. When the second step was eliminated, scientists were left with TeX, and we poor Humanists were left with Word. LyX is our great white hope. Or the pink one, considering the default background </really end rant> Cheers, S. -- __________________________________________________ Stefano Franchi Associate Research Professor Department of Hispanic Studies Ph: +1 (979) 845-2125 Texas A&M University Fax: +1 (979) 845-6421 College Station, Texas, USA stef...@tamu.edu http://stefano.cleinias.org
