piet@cs.ruu.nl (Piet van Oostrum) (12/16/89)
In article <14650@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>, kwon@sybil (Thomas Kwon) writes:
`
`I was wondering if anyone is interested in creating a newsgroup called
`"TeX.questions" or something along that line.
`
I had been contemplating the creation of a newsgroup comp.text.TeX for some
days when Thomas' message appeared. As I haven't seen an official call for
discussion yet, I think it is time to issue one. Otherwise we will get a
loose discussion that brings us nowhere.
I propose the newsgroup to be unmoderated.
The newsgroup is for TeX and LaTeX related postings. These are now mainly
found in comp.text, with some Postscript related postings in
comp.lang.postscript. About half (or a little bit more) of comp.text is
devoted to TeX and LaTeX, and I rather would not be bothered by nroff/troff
or even WP. This motivates the place in the hierarchy.
Now about the name: An other alternative would be comp.text.tex. I have a
number of reasons to propose comp.text.TeX.
1. It hono(u)rs Knuth in that this is HiS preferred spelling.
2. Isn't it nice to have the first newsgroup with capital letters in its name?
3. While pressing the shift key you have an additional 2 seconds to think
about your posting.
NOTE: Please let us not have another aquarium disaster!
I think it would be advisable if the TeXhax Digest would be
bi-directionally gatewayed. It is now gatewayed *into* comp.text, but for
the benefit of those poor people without Usenet access, the other way would
also be preferable. So I will also send this message to TeXhax. Of course
gatawaying is up to the moderators. They can also make a reasonable
selection for inclusion.
The discussion period will end on Thursday, Jan 11, 1990. This might seem
too long for such a simple issue, but think of the holiday season. If the
name issue is not settled in three weeks I will send out a POLL FOR NAME.
--
Piet* van Oostrum, Dept of Computer Science, Utrecht University,
Padualaan 14, P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Telephone: +31-30-531806 Uucp: uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!ruuinf!piet
Telefax: +31-30-513791 Internet: piet@cs.ruu.nl (*`Pete')ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) (12/18/89)
|Now about the name: An other alternative would be comp.text.tex. I have a |number of reasons to propose comp.text.TeX. |1. It hono(u)rs Knuth in that this is HiS preferred spelling. |2. Isn't it nice to have the first newsgroup with capital letters in its name? |3. While pressing the shift key you have an additional 2 seconds to think | about your posting. |NOTE: Please let us not have another aquarium disaster! I support creation of the newsgroup but I think the capitalized spelling would not survive news software, gateways and all that (I don't really know). Anyway I don't think it is that important. If we were really fanatic about the spelling we would name our binaries TeX and LaTeX on Unix and give the users a hard time. I'd rather give my little fingers a rest.
beck@mimir.cs.cornell.edu (Micah Beck) (12/18/89)
I agree with Ken: yes to the creation of the newsgroup, no the capitalization. If the capitalized name were to be adopted, I'd really suggest that another newgroup called comp.text.tex be created as an "alias" which just fed into comp.tex.TeX. I once created a "TeX" directory for all the TeX-related software I culled from the net but then had to link it to "tex" to avoid confusion: "I looked for /usr/src/local/src/tex, just like you said,` but it doesn't exist." "It's spelled capital T, and capital X, but small e." "Huh?" It's a mistake. /micah
lamy@ai.utoronto.ca (Jean-Francois Lamy) (12/18/89)
I know for a fact that (some) mailers and news software *will* trample on the uppercase/lowercase distinction (and will definitely resist attempts to move the E between two headers). It is nowadays impossible to control the convoluted paths articles travel through when being posted. Note as well that we ought to move this discussion to news.groups a.s.a.p. I think that a call for comp.text.tex would work out. Jean-Francois Lamy lamy@ai.utoronto.ca, uunet!ai.utoronto.ca!lamy AI Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
piet@cs.ruu.nl (Piet van Oostrum) (12/18/89)
In article <35257@cornell.UUCP>, beck@mimir (Micah Beck) writes:
`I agree with Ken: yes to the creation of the newsgroup, no the capitalization.
`If the capitalized name were to be adopted, I'd really suggest that another
`newgroup called comp.text.tex be created as an "alias" which just fed into
`comp.tex.TeX. I once created a "TeX" directory for all the TeX-related
`software I culled from the net but then had to link it to "tex" to avoid
`confusion:
`
` "I looked for /usr/src/local/src/tex, just like you said,`
` but it doesn't exist."
` "It's spelled capital T, and capital X, but small e."
` "Huh?"
`
`It's a mistake.
`
I already retracted the capitalization. By the way, the discussion should
be continued in news.groups. Please obey the followup: line.
--
Piet* van Oostrum, Dept of Computer Science, Utrecht University,
Padualaan 14, P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Telephone: +31-30-531806 Uucp: uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!ruuinf!piet
Telefax: +31-30-513791 Internet: piet@cs.ruu.nl (*`Pete')