kbb@nancy.UUCP (01/26/87)
TeX was indeed designed by an academician. But it certainly isn't out of
the question for professional typesetting. I've seen some other
typesetting languages from companies in the field (e.g., Compugraphic)
and TeX is easier to use (with appropriate macros), and produces better
output than whatever else I've seen. The input to TeX can look like just
about anything (including troff or whatever), so just because plain TeX
has some weird ideas about what to call things (\baselineskip???) or how
things should be types (\centerline{...}???) don't think that makes TeX
hard to learn for people used to other systems. And perhaps the best
thing about it is that everything is public domain -- the source code,
the file formats, ...
In the latest TUGboat, a French group described a table package they had
done. I've never used it, though.
LaTeX isn't ``essentially'' a macro package for TeX, it _is_ a macro
package for TeX.
Karl kbb%cs.brown.edu@csnet-relay (from Arpa)
{decvax,ihnp4}!brunix!kbb