Re: loutVSTex

[James Ramsey]

--- rafal polonski <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello,
> Can anybody tell me few arguments about "What can be
> done with Lout which
> is not possible with TeX". I would like to know Lout
> advantages comapring
> to TeX.
> thanks
> -- 

I think that depend exactly what you mean by "TeX". It
has been said that Lout is more like a high-level
language, whereas TeX is closer to an "assembly 
language." This is sort of true, if you are talking
about plain TeX. There's nothing particularly
low-level about plain TeX's math syntax that I've
seen, but other things, like changing the font size in
a document are more difficult, and involve some fairly
low-level detail. In plain TeX, you'd have to do your
own macros for section headings and so on. So if you
are talking about plain TeX vs. Lout, Lout definitely
provides more abstraction "out of the box".

Lout vs. LaTeX is a bit of a tricky comparision. I'd
like to say that Lout is more flexible than LaTeX, but
the situation is a bit more complicated than that.
LaTeX was not designed to be greatly customizable, but
customizability of section headings and the table of
contents can be "bolted on" through packages like
sectsty, titlesec, toclft, and titletoc. Lout is
designed to be flexible, but there are parts of it
that are frustratingly rigid. While section headings
are easily customizable, other things are surprisingly
rigid. The placement of the table of contents is not
customizable for documents in the "report" or "book"
document classes. The customizability of the table of
contents itself has something to be desired too,
especially in the "report" format where the title,
author and date appear above the table of contents,
even if there is a cover page. (And for you other
Louters, I've tried setting @ContentsSeparate.)

The equation syntax for Lout is probably somewhat
easier to read than it is for TeX. While some may
complain that "x sup 2" is more verbose than it needs
to be, as compared with "x^2", other expressions look
nicer, i.e.,

lim from {x -> 3} {2x - 3} over {x - 4}

versus

\lim_{x \longrightarrow 3} {2x - 3} \over {x - 4}

or

x <= 3

versus

x \leq 3

That's what I have to say about the matter. I'll let
you draw your own conclusions.


=====


----I am a fool for Christ. Mostly I am a fool.----

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com