The first? [LWN.net]

The first?

Posted Jul 16, 2003 17:52 UTC (Wed) by dr_lha (guest, #86)
In reply to: The first? by wjhenney
Parent article: Scribus 1.0 released

I don't know what ConTeXt is, but LaTeX (therefore TeX) are typesetting languages, not DTP. DTP software is all about laying out things on a page how you would like to see them, with great control over the position of objects; with TeX the software makes the decisions for you in terms of layout, using complex typesetting rules (which can often mean if you have a specific layout in mind that breaks these rules you have to battle TeX to get it to do what you want). Both programs produce professional output, but represent very opposite ends of the publishing field, with word processors somewhere between the two.

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The first?

Posted Jul 17, 2003 7:16 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

With TeX, *you* make the decision as to the position of every drop of ink. Plain TeX takes some of the grunt work off your hands, but leaves you with most of it. LaTeX is the one that tries to do everything for you.

But regardless, I'll agree; TeX is not a DTP application. It's a reasonably good *backend* to DTP applications, though.