Re: The beauty of LATEX

On 10/19/2011 7:41 AM, Joel de Guzman wrote:
> On 10/19/2011 5:08 PM, Paul A. Bristow wrote:
>
>>> 1) What's the issue with XEP produced PDF's
>>
>> I'm also puzzled by some 'yetch' reactions to the PDF versions.  Can anyone be more specific about
>> what they dislike about the appearance (the content is pretty much identical to the HTML)?  Is it
>> the font?  Or?
>
> If you ask me, there is no 'yetch'. But OTOH, there is no 'wow' either.
> Have you seen the link I gave showing of XeTeX?
>
>    http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex
>
> Check out the advanced typographic features of OpenType and AAT:
>
>    http://nitens.org/taraborelli/TeXOpenType
>
> Here's a showcase:
>
>    http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/
>
> Now, that is 'wow'. Such fine control cannot be achieved with DocBook.
> I can't even begin to imagine how much we can do with our output PDFs.
> Comparing DocBook to modern LaTeX is like comparing a Ferrari to a
> VW Bug. The Bug is not really 'yetch' for me, but a Ferrari is a 'wow'.
>
> (To be fair, DocBook is not a typesetting system like LaTeX, but
> that's another point! LaTeX *is* a typesetting system.)
>
> But really, it's not just aesthetics. What I hate most is the insane
> and fragile toolchain that's sooo impenetrable to hacking. I'd
> insist that the way to move forward is to get rid of this nasty
> toolchain, or at least provide an alternative, more reasonable,
> more hackable, toolchain. LaTeX is vastly more refined and mature.
>
> [snip Doxygen stuff. I'm already having an allergic reaction to it and
> I've already said enough about it.]

doxygen is just a tool for documenting C++ constructs and creating a 
reference section containing those constructs. Shouldn't one be able to 
look at a function and know that it takes certain parameters, each of 
which mean something, and returns a value, which means something ? Ditto 
with templates. If there is a better way of documenting this purely with 
quickbook, I would be glad to use it.