[TriLUG] Anyone using, or would like to use, Plain TeX?

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 3 Jan 2013 17:59:04 -0500, Chris Knowles said:
> Given that your name is all over the LyX wiki for documentation and
> tips and tutorials, I'm intrigued as to the reasons for your moving
> away from LyX.
> 
> Can you expand on what started your move away.

Hi Chris,

It took me about a week to formulate a reasonable response to your
question, because it's not a simple question...

For one thing, it's not a done deal that I've left LyX, even if Plain
TeX turns out to be good.

Now, to answer your question...

LyX is the way my books get written. Currently it's the most mission
critical software I have, and is also a single point of failure for my
business.

LyX has been drifting more and more toward XML native format, which
makes it less and less hand and Perl editable as time goes on. So
far, the LyX developers' solution has been to format the LyX XML with
strategic newlines so that it's still somewhat hand-editable. But as
you know, the definition of XML has nothing to do with whitespace, so
their thing is just a convention, and a not particularly well documented
convention. This means that when I programmatically output LyX XML, I
must conform not only to XML and the Schema, but also to the newline
conventions.

A few weeks ago there was a thread where some actually said to me,
"What's your gripe with XML, I hand edit it." Well yeah, and once upon
a time I programmed in hexidecimal machine language, but that doesn't
mean I want to keep doing so. So far the "what's the matter" crew are in
the minority, but that could change, and if it does, I have to bail from
LyX, and do so quickly. In short, I can deal with the current LyX just
fine -- it's what they might do to it later that has me worried.

Another thing that worries me is the priorities I perceive in the LyX
community. The way it appears to me, they've bending over backwards to
accommodate people who take LyX out on a scenic drive every Sunday,
while de-prioritizing those who use it day in and day out to make a
living or write a thesis. Especially troubling is their taking
seriously these "Hey, other software on my Mac and iPhone have
such-and-such GUI feature, why can't LyX appear like that on my Mac and
iPhone?

Then there are the compile issues. In 2005, you couldn't compile LyX
without a brand spanking new Qt4, and even then, it required huge
manual intervention to get the compile. I have no reason to believe
they've quit requiring the latest and greatest Qt4. When I asked about
this (admittedly, in an angry way), I got tons of flames, several
people saying "just upgrade your qt4" (oh yeah, bust all my other
software to make LyX work, yeah). I was planning to leave and create a
VimOutliner hosted book writing software at that point, but one guy
told me the nugget of information necessary to compile, so I stayed.

All this points to the fact that I desperately need a plan B in case a
future LyX no longer fits the needs of my business. I don't do emacs, I
don't like Docbook (or else I'd have no reason to dislike the move to
XML format in LyX), and for a person with my skillset and lack thereof,
LaTeX is a mess. Kile ain't happening because I've banned all things
KDE from my computers.

Standing out bright and clear from all these things is TeX. Markup is
minimal -- it's practical to write TeX in Vim. TeX hasn't changed in
years -- I don't need to worry about Apple fanboiz hijacking the
project's priorities. Unlike with LaTeX, it's pretty easy to make
your own paragraph and character styles with TeX. It's a simple, sane,
easy language that can be used for a wide variety of self-publishing
tasks.

So I'll continue researching Plain TeX as a possible new way to make my
books. I hope I've answered your question.

Thanks

SteveT

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