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Part Two III. What TeX is Good for. No single piece of software is everything, and neither is TeX. It is possible to look at TeX and wish for more. So, jus

Part Two III. What TeX is Good for. No single piece of software is everything, and neither is TeX. It is possible to look at TeX and wish for more. So, just what is TeX and what is it good for? The history is clear: For Knuth's series of books, 'The Art of Computer Programming', the publisher Addison-Wesley told Knuth that for his next edition they were going to use an approach to typesetting that would reduce the 'typesetting quality' of the results. So, Knuth wrote TeX so that he could do the 'typesetting' for his books himself and deliver to the publisher 'camera-ready' copy or perhaps just some files. So, Knuth wrote TeX to let him write his books. Knuth presented his work to the American Mathematical Society that quickly took TeX seriously. Why? For typing math, TeX is terrific, was much better than anything else, and mostly still is. Otherwise, the typesetting quality is about as high as typesetting gets. So, TeX is also good for developing camera ready versions of papers in mathematics. Quickly TeX became the international standard for word processing of more mathematical material in all of the more mathematical fields in science and engineering. Since then, TeX has been used for the word processing for many books in mathematical fields. TeX is good for such word processing: TeX was designed for such work and is heavily used for it. Note: With TeX, Knuth was essentially looking backwards in time, not forward. So, he was writing software to automate, with high quality, what was old and solid but slow and expensive in manual typesetting for mathematics and to be printed on paper. So, he was not trying to do all of word processing, graphical design, interactive user interface, and software development for the future of information, computing, the Web, and civilization. Notice the typesetting and 'graphical design' in Knuth's 'The Art of Computing' and 'The TeXBook' and in papers with a lot of mathematics: (1) There isn't a lot of color; mostly it's just black and white. (2) There fonts are not 'stylish' like can find in printed advertising. (3) There are only a few tables and figures, and the figures are mostly simple line drawings, X-Y graphs, or photographs. (4) The output is to be on paper and not 'interactive' or continually updated. That output can also be converted to PDF and still not be interactive. (5) Typically the writing is by no more than a few authors so that the techniques for coordinating the work of many people on one large software development project are not relevant. Net, the emphasis is on the technical content and not the typography, graphical design, GUIs, or large work groups. So, now we know what TeX is good for. IV. Warnings. For the math, be well advised to stay with just Knuth's math fonts standard in TeX and the AMS fonts and symbols. Once you are staying with these math fonts, for the text just stay with Knuth's Computer Modern fonts that are standard in TeX and work well with the math fonts. For developing your own high quality math fonts for TeX, that'd be a LOT of work. For using fonts for text other than Knuth's standard Computer Modern, it would be a lot of work to get them to work well with Knuth's math fonts. If you are not doing math, then you can work to use fonts Helvetica, Bookman, Century School Book, etc. for your text, but then there will be some question just why you are using TeX. If you are developing a Web page, then use HTML and whatever, maybe ASP.NET, that helps writing HTML. TeX and HTML have very different purposes. If, compared with TeX, you want a lot more or something very different, then you will likely run into problems from limitations from the original intentions of TeX. If you want something as good as TeX where TeX is good plus a lot more, then don't hold your breath while waiting for it. If you want to write a better TeX yourself, then start with Knuth's voluminous, exemplary, polished, very finely detailed documentation in volumes A-E of 'Computers and Typesetting'. After reading that material, you may decide that you have better things to do than writing a better TeX. Don't think that TeX and HTML compete: They are designed for very different purposes.

juiceandjuice 16y ago
Actually, I'd argue that HTML had a very similar goal to TeX with a very different philosophy. That goal was purely the sharing of information. Some early browsers even had postscript interpreters so you could link to papers and view them in the browser. The first website at SLAC (first site in the US) was purely meant to be a gateway to the SPIRES database. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Physics_Information_Retrieval_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Physics_Information_Re... I guess what I'm trying to say is that their histories are interwoven, and despite being different technologies, they shared a common goal and worked together. It's possible philosophy of what a web browser is probably led to their divergence more than anything.
- NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
  I've suspected that Tim Berners-Lee knew TeX before he did HTML. That he was a physicist in computing at CERN means that he had to have seen TeX. I'd say that the main difference is that TeX was looking backwards and HTML, forwards. Again, TeX was trying to computerize old, stable, slow, expensive, high quality manual typesetting for math, and HTML, at least now, is on the way to being the main way people view nearly all information and interact with computers. The emphasis on the 'typographic quality' of the results is very different: TeX goes for the highest quality, and HTML is to be quick and dirty. Yes, both had smaller beginnings: For TeX, Knuth wanted to write his books. For HTML, Berners-Lee wanted a physics newsletter. At this point there is a huge difference: TeX is solidly frozen, and HTML continues with changes as fast as Jeff Jaffe and the rest of computing can implement, In the future, sure, HTML could replace TeX. For the very high quality paragraph setting, there's no fundamental reason HTML could not specify and implement that. For the math, similarly. There does need to be an 'executing language' (TeX is a programming language, maybe Turing machine equivalent, and not just static text), but JavaScript might suffice. A big advantage would be that HTML now knows about all the characters in all the languages. But such high interest in math is likely in conflict with reality!

juiceandjuice 16y ago

Actually, I'd argue that HTML had a very similar goal to TeX with a very different philosophy. That goal was purely the sharing of information. Some early browsers even had postscript interpreters so you could link to papers and view them in the browser. The first website at SLAC (first site in the US) was purely meant to be a gateway to the SPIRES database. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Physics_Information_Retrieval_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Physics_Information_Re... I guess what I'm trying to say is that their histories are interwoven, and despite being different technologies, they shared a common goal and worked together. It's possible philosophy of what a web browser is probably led to their divergence more than anything.

NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
I've suspected that Tim Berners-Lee knew TeX before he did HTML. That he was a physicist in computing at CERN means that he had to have seen TeX. I'd say that the main difference is that TeX was looking backwards and HTML, forwards. Again, TeX was trying to computerize old, stable, slow, expensive, high quality manual typesetting for math, and HTML, at least now, is on the way to being the main way people view nearly all information and interact with computers. The emphasis on the 'typographic quality' of the results is very different: TeX goes for the highest quality, and HTML is to be quick and dirty. Yes, both had smaller beginnings: For TeX, Knuth wanted to write his books. For HTML, Berners-Lee wanted a physics newsletter. At this point there is a huge difference: TeX is solidly frozen, and HTML continues with changes as fast as Jeff Jaffe and the rest of computing can implement, In the future, sure, HTML could replace TeX. For the very high quality paragraph setting, there's no fundamental reason HTML could not specify and implement that. For the math, similarly. There does need to be an 'executing language' (TeX is a programming language, maybe Turing machine equivalent, and not just static text), but JavaScript might suffice. A big advantage would be that HTML now knows about all the characters in all the languages. But such high interest in math is likely in conflict with reality!