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Curious about the suggestion to try plain TeX. Could you expand on what are the advantages? Do you mean it as a learning stepping stone or for actual usage?
by agentofuser 7y ago
Curious about the suggestion to try plain TeX. Could you expand on what are the advantages? Do you mean it as a learning stepping stone or for actual usage?
- bch 7y agoUpvoted. I hope GP elucidates.
- bingerman 7y agoNot OP, but for me it helped to understand what is actually happening. Definitely recommended. Nowadays I use mostly Context (mainly because fonts and creating your own layout is made easy), and never plain Tex, but still I think reading the Texbook was one of the best decisions I've made concerning desktop publishing.
- svat 7y agoI meant for actual usage, at least for a while. I wanted to answer your question properly and in detail, but will settle for a somewhat cryptic response (sorry): in short, by using plain TeX instead of LaTeX, you get a workflow where you have a better understanding of what's going on, more control, less fighting the system, much better error messages (as they're now actually related to the code you type, not to macros you didn't write and haven't seen), less craziness of TeX macros (please program in a real language and generate TeX), faster processing (compile time in milliseconds), opportunity to unlearn LaTeX and possibly consider systems like ConTeXt, more fun etc. (Some earlier related comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15734980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15734980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15151894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15151894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19790191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19790191)