TeX (Was Re: Future of jadetex (Was: First Open Source Documentation Summit at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention))

[Dan York <dyork@linuxcare.com>]

Camille wrote:

> 4) LaTeX gives professional prints for *many* languages and uses free'
> tools

One of my concerns with the the suggestions about using TeX or LaTeX is
my own ignorance of the cross-platform nature of TeX/LaTeX.  I have known
of people using TeX/LaTeX for years and years on UNIX and Linux systems.
But are TeX and LaTeX *also* available for users of Windows and 
Macintosh (and other) systems?

The reason I ask is this... as I understand it, the suggestion is to 
use LaTeX as an alternative to DSSSL or XSL stylesheets.  (If that is
NOT the suggestion, then please help me understand what is being 
suggested.)

But will that then restrict people who can format the documents to those
running on Linux?  I mean, anyone on any operating system with a text
editor can create a DocBook document (SGML or XML). No big deal.
But if you want to do something with that document - even just to
see how it might look - you have to run it through a program to create
the output.

If such a program is based entirely on LaTeX, is that program then limited
to running on Linux?

This may certainly be fine for *many* (if not most) of the authors of LDP 
documents.  But there may certainly be potential authors or editors who
want to contribute to help Linux grow, but may not be able to do their
writing/editing on an actual Linux machine.  Are we limiting the potential
contributions by these folks?  And are we limiting the acceptance and use
of DocBook if the formatting tools are only on Linux?

DSSSL and XSL and their associated tools certainly do have their issues,
but it does seem like tools are available for them on multiple platforms.

My 2 cents,
Dan 


--
Dan York,  Linuxcare, Inc.
dyork@linuxcare.com    http://www.linuxcare.com/
1-603-264-0129 mobile, 603-268-0691 tel, 603-268-0103 fax
Linuxcare.  Support for the revolution.



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