On Mon, 9 Jul 2007, Jean-Pierre Coulon wrote:
> Daniel Taupin's last versions of the MusiXTeX documentation discouraged
> making
> large scores under LaTeX, because of the lack of 'registers' - Don's version
> is in a milder tone. Yet I managed to make a large score under LaTeX with
> the
> 1995 EMTeX distribution.
>
> Nothing wrong happened. I use quite a few \def commands. What is meant by
> a 'TeX register'? I've made a "three pass" batch file similar to the
> manual's MUSIXTEX.BAT to have musixflx make the right spacings.
>
> Are these warnings against using LaTeX true, or a myth? The LaTeX source of
> the MusiXTeX manual contains "I hate LaTeX" somewhere.
>
Dear Jean-Pierre,
I think, you are completely right, the newer TeX versions do not complain
about lack of registers, because TeX is in most installation eTeX with
more registers and memory.
Furthermore, LATeX takes all TeX primitives and many plain TeX commands.
In my opinion, warnings against the use of LATeX as a conflict with musixtex
are probably outdated.
However, like many other people working with TeX for a long time, it took
a while until I switched to LATeX.
I had so many TeX macro collections that fulfilled my needs and
it is a lot easier to adapt a TeX macro collection to a new layout than to
redef all those LATeX registers. It needed the demand of journals to switch
to LATeX. So I understand the reluctance of Daniel to recommend LATeX.
But for a book or even a larger brochure, it would be crazy not to
use LATeX. No TeXpert has the time to reinvent
what hundreds of developpers hane done.
pmx produces a TeX file, IMO for good reason, because for most cases plain
TeX is fully adequate.
I modified the Gottesdienstordnung described in WIMA, but used TeX instead
of LATeX. Two or hree columns on a page is not a reason
to take LATeX, a plain TeX macro can produce it just as well.
Furtheremore, I find the rather rigid LATeX formatting a disadvantage
for music typesetting. One would have to write a special musix.cls to get
a good environment for typesetting with LATeX.
Regards,
Christof
--
Prof. Dr. Christof K. Biebricher
Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry
D-37070 Göttingen
Tel: +49 (551) 201 1442
FAX: +49 (551) 201 1578
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