[lug] LaTeX, margins, font size

[J. Wayde Allen]

On 30 Aug 2001, Tkil wrote:

> LaTeX is reasonably readable, even in its raw form.

Agreed, that is one of the things I like about it.  A document created in
LaTeX/TeX is pretty darn readable on any platform even if the document
processor isn't available.  Simply stripping the LaTeX commands results in
a pure ASCII version of the text and is pretty simple to do.  This is
often what I end up doing if someone must have my papers in MSWord or
WordPerfect format.  Strip the commands, import the text to a word
processor, and tweak the formating as needed.  I don't suppose someone has
a dvi2word script?

To be fair though, the first time user usually realizes that he/she
"could" read the raw ASCII text files.  The problem is that one doesn't
really see any reason why one "should" have to read it this way.  It is
kind of like being forced to read HTML formated e-mail.  You can do it,
but it is frustrating.  Not to mention that the reason for using this kind
of thing is to create nice documents, so having to do this is a bit hard
to swallow.  At least, that was the way I felt when I started up the
learning curve.

- Wayde
  (wallen at lug.boulder.co.us)