More TeX advocacy [LWN.net]

More TeX advocacy

Posted Jul 17, 2003 6:36 UTC (Thu) by dr_lha (guest, #86)
In reply to: More TeX advocacy by wjhenney
Parent article: Scribus 1.0 released

I think you make some interesting points here - but it does go back to the fact that no matter what Wikipedia says, nobody in the publishing world considered LaTeX to be a DTP program. I'll admit that I thought about this, is: LaTeX is a program that runs on a 'D'esk'T'op computer and can be used for 'P'ublishing, so why isn't it a DTP program? Well the answer lies in what you said:

"..I think that if `DTP' is supposed to signify more than just a sociological group or a market segment for software vendors.."

The fact is that it isn't supposed to signify any more. Usage of the phrase DTP is intrinsically linked to programs like Quark Xpress. Consider "Word Processor", I would consider MS Word, OpenOffice Writer and Abiword to be "Word Processors", but not Emacs. How come? Emacs can be used to "process words" after all. Social context is everything here, the meaning of these two words have transcended their literal meaning, to having a meaning that includes a fairly narrow range of software. The same is true of "DTP".

Therefore LaTeX is not a DTP program. :-)

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The social construction of DTP

Posted Jul 17, 2003 15:43 UTC (Thu) by wjhenney (guest, #11768) [Link]

At the risk of turning into a bore, I'll rise to the bait here...

nobody in the publishing world considered LaTeX to be a DTP program

and until very recently nobody considered Linux to be a desktop operating system, despite the fact that it has been on my desktop for a decade :)

Of course you are right that the concept `DTP', as commonly used, is a social construct that is "intrinsically linked to programs like Quark Xpress." I was just hoping that people in the free-software world could see through all that marketing BS, and would adopt a more `empirical' (or at the very least `instrumental') definition.

Your analogy with Emacs vs Word Processors is interesting, but IMO flawed. Emacs is not a Word Processor because it is not designed to fulfil (many) of the functions of a Word Processor (typesetting simple letters, reports, etc.) and AFAIK nobody uses it for such tasks. On the other hand, TeX-based systems are designed to fulfill the same functions as `DTP apps' (among many others) and are used by at least some people to do so. I think a more apt analogy would be with Emacs vs IDEs. Is Emacs an IDE? A typical MS Visual Studio user might not think so but I certainly do. It integrates any compiler/debugger you care to mention, has syntax highlighting and class browsing for all languages under the sun, etc. Go by the smell, not by the looks :)

Cheers

Will