Re: The inners of Lout

[Oliver Bandel]

Hi Raúl,


On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, DervishD wrote:

>     Hi Oliver :)
> 
>     Thanks a lot for your answer and advice. I has been useful :)
> 
> >>     I'm currently proposing to my enterprise a change from TeX and
> >> Adobe Framemaker to Lout, being it easier and more powerful to my
> >> opinion,
> >Both systems has their advantages. But if you are using plain-TeX
> >you better should try LaTeX or ConTeXt.
> 
>     Not possible by now. The TeX gurus says 'no' to LaTeX and the
> like. They prefer plain TeX (and I do too, even I don't use TeX ;)))
> It has to do with low level control or something like that.

You can do Low-Level control with LaTeX too.
But you need TeX-knowledge then (your local gurus have)
and LaTeX-knowledge too (your local plain-TeX-gurus seems
not to have).
LaTeX is much more powerful than TeX in respects of
high-level usage. It's similar to Lout in this respect.
And you can use the low-level features, if you have
detailed knowledge of TeX... and if you have it,
you should be able to decrypt LaTeX's code, because
LaTeX is build upon TeX. (But in LaTeX3 it will be
a stand-alone system, but backward compatible).

In programming of low-level stuff of layout, for example
typesetting special boxes with rotations and positioning,
Lout is much much easier to use than TeX!
In TeX you don't have graphic features and you have
only a small number of registers.... this sometimes
causes problems.

Especially in plain-TeX there is a need for packages,
example for including eps-files.
if you do not want to use these packages, you have to
write a large amount of code by yourself (reinventing the
wheel). In LaTeX you can use the grapicx-package and
use \includgraphics{epsfile.eps} (with commands
dor setting the scale and such stuff...).
In Lout you use @Include{} (and I don't know
all optional parameters, but scaling and such tasks
are easy in lout).


What are you using TeX for?
Are you typesetting books?



> 
> >IMHO the typographic quality of TeX is better.
> 
>     Here at work the Computer-Modern fonts are more familiar, but
> Lout does a great job too ;)

I like the CM-fonts too.
But in lout you can use TeX-fonts too. I didn't try it,
but it should work.


> 
> >If you need very good typography at any level, you have
> >to use programs of the TeX-family.
> 
>     Here at work the TeX group uses a homemade TeX from the Knuth
> sources (at least that is what I have heard), under Solaris and
> Linux.

Do they have changed the sourcecode?

BTW: Jeff is not happy with the current Lout and the german
     TeX-Gurus are not happy with TeX/LaTeX/... that's the
     reason for developping NTS (and other TeX-derived systems).
     NTS is planned to be more usr-friendly in respect of
     creating extension-packages... but I think this advantage
     is not at the user-level and more an advantage for the
     programmers. So enhancing a system with self-written
     packages seems to be easier in Lout even in the future.
     The commands in Lout are less cryptic (=> higher level).
     

> 
> >P.S.: Yes, I was very happy about Lout as I first looked at it.
> >      But my hype was gone... I see the advantages of lout, but
> >      it does not provide all things I need. But nevertheless,
> >      it's powerful.
> 
>     I prefer Lout mainly because three reasons: I can read the source
> code and understand most of it,

Yes, that's a good reason. :-)

Maybe your TeX-gurus don't want to loose their job. ;-)


> I have access to a free manual and
> it's GPL'd.

TeX is free too.
Well, the manual... hmhhh. The TeX-book is not free of charge.


> I can build Lout in every Unix I have access, but I don't

This should be possible with TeX too, but you need a lot more
disk space... for the fonts.... say 90 MB or more.
Lout needs about 1,3 MB for the program itself... maybe
some additional space for some packages.


> know even where locate the TeX sources (my fault entirely O:) ).

The original TeX is written in Web, a literate-programming-tool.
The programming language itself is Pascal.
Who uses pascal in these days?


Ciao,
   Oliver