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authorNorbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>2019-09-02 13:46:59 +0900
committerNorbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>2019-09-02 13:46:59 +0900
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+\input blue.tex \loadindexmacros \report
+
+\bluechapter Afterthoughts
+
+\beginsummary
+This chapter relates BLUe's format to existing formats and styles,
+especially \AmS-(La)\TeX, (La)\TeX, LAmS\TeX, and the TUGboat styles.
+At the end some statistics about processing PWT has been included.
+\endsummary
+
+Why this work? Is \LaTeX{} not sufficient?
+\LaTeX{} was not necessary, the \TeX book contained it all, \smiley.
+This advantage turned out to be a severe disadvantage.
+\TeX{} was simply too much, too unusual and ahead of its time.
+The bad news is, alas, that \TeX{} is very error-prone,
+in the hands of the casual layman.\ftn{Don't misunderstand me,
+ the software itself is as free of errors as bugfree can be.
+ No, it has all to do with people who partly
+ understand the system, but need macros.
+ Many a released macro\Dash the more so for collections of macros\Dash
+ is immediately followed by an improved version, and so on. The last
+ observation is due to George Greenwade, and I agree with him.}
+One has to be very precise, has to oversee all the consequences,
+and has to be utmost, utmost consequent.
+
+Perhaps because of the latter Lamport dared to do less,
+thought that simplifying is the way out. To quote Dijkstra
+\begincenter\noindent`Abstraction is our only mental tool to
+ master complexity'
+\endcenter
+He provided a system tuned for the end-user,
+along with a users' guide.
+The latter is the big deal for general acceptance.\ftn{BLUe's format system
+ not only provides the macros and the users' guide PWT, no it also provides
+ the background articles, especially the paradigm series, next to articles
+ which account in detail for some other formats like manmac, AMS, and \TUB.}
+\begincenter
+If only there had been a users' guide for manmac,
+the \AllTeX{} world would have looked much different
+from what it is today. {\TB} is
+`intended for people who have never used {\TeX} before,
+as well as for experienced {\TeX} hackers.
+\endcenter
+Below I'll very roughly characterize other formats, which enjoy a general
+acceptance, in relation to BLUe's format.
+The AMS and TUG styles, and the work of Spivak, have been
+surveyed\Dash and commented in depth\Dash in separate articles.
+
+
+^^{\AmSTeX}
+\bluehead \AmS-(La)\TeX
+
+These formats are not personal but provided and maintained by the \AMS.
+It is a rich and wealthy source. My comments date back to {\oldstyle1992},
+when I studied the formats in detail.
+Their user and installation guides are very good.
+The coding is clever, very clever, but tends to be monolithic.
+It is not easy to borrow parts from it. The formatting of references
+in \bluetex{} has been inspired upon \AmSTeX's preprint style.
+
+^^{\LAMSTeX}
+\bluehead \LAMSTeX
+
+Michael Spivak did a great job.
+His macros for tables and commutative diagrams
+are impressive, very impressive.
+The way he recast the \LaTeX{} functionality looks very promising.
+It is only a pity that his code does not enjoy general acceptance,
+as far as I know.
+It is even sadder that his codings have not been
+studied nor borrowed from.\ftn{I must confess that I was put off by
+ his argument for why an \cs{else} is needed within \cs{loop} \cs{repeat}.
+ Not true, IMHO, with all respect. A little Boolean arithmetic will do,
+ and is useful for other purposes too. I explained that in `Syntactic
+ Sugar,' and showed codes for that.}
+
+
+^^{\LaTeX}
+\bluehead La\TeX
+
+Indeed, \LaTeX{} is not sufficient, although much of
+the functionality of BLUe's format was already provided by \LaTeX.
+The setup of BLUe's format is much different though.
+\LaTeX{} does not suit my purposes.
+Its Achilles heel is customization.
+Some features of BLUe's format are
+its open eye for change,
+its openendedness,
+next to
+its turtle graphics,
+its databases,\ftn{This is much more general than {\em separately stored\/}
+ style files.}
+and last but not least its (mini-)indexing on the fly,
+that is what I need.
+I understand \bluetex{} and feel happy with it, \winksmiley,
+probably for the rest of my life.
+The great\Dash not to be underestimated\Dash virtues of \LaTeX{} are
+\begincenter
+separate style files
+users' guide
+general acceptance
+\endcenter
+BLUe's format is stable, compatible with plain \TeX,
+well-organized, and reasonably compact.
+I have tried to combine the best of both worlds.
+\begincenter
+Stay with Knuth with respect to his unsurpassed markup, and
+borrow Lamport's awareness of the necessity of a users' guide.
+\endcenter
+If you ponder about a manmac users' guide, it is mandatory to pay attention
+to developments since.\ftn{However, I must confess that I'm not
+ completely up to date with \PS, Adobe's Photoshop, nor Acrobat.}
+That is how BLUe's format emerged.
+A tribute to manmac and some more, that is the royal road I passed by.
+Reality shows that manmac.tex has been neglected by the \AllTeX{}
+community.
+Given the reputation of Don Knuth, and the wide-spread use of \LaTeX,
+I'm realistic about the acceptance of BLUe's format.\ftn{Thinking aloud:
+ I would be happy if {\oldstyle50}\% of NTG's members finds something of
+ interest in BLUe's format, be it the system, a nice macro, or just
+ an eye-opener with respect to markup or computer-assisted
+ typesetting in general. From CyrTUG I expect that even {\oldstyle75}\% of their
+ members can take advantage of the system.
+ And what about {\oldstyle10}\% of the {\it unorganized\/} \TeX{} users,
+ \winksmiley?}
+Nevertheless, I hope that BLUe's format will find its niche within the spectrum of
+tools for computer-assisted production and consumption of information.
+IMHO, with all respect, it deserves it. \winksmiley.
+
+In the past I used \LaTeX{} but was unhappy with
+the layout, and therefore added modifications, like many of us.
+The results did not satisfy me, because
+I never got the feeling that I understood the coding.
+Even worse, I never felt happy with the coding of \LaTeX.
+
+Since then, I have become more and more enthusiastic about Knuth's markup,
+especially about the subtleness of plain and manmac.
+Understanding his macros is a real challenge, but once mastered
+you feel like in heaven. It gave me such a pleasure.
+The beneficial spinoff of this thorough study was that
+the knowledge gained contributed much to the compactness of
+BLUe's format.
+
+At the Euro\TeX{} {\oldstyle94} the new, long-awaited
+\LaTeX{\oldstyle2}$\epsilon$ went public.
+During the conference I was asking myself over and over the same questions,
+to uncover the reasons why I don't believe that the approach taken
+is the right one, especially for self-publishing authors.
+My septicisms come down to the following.
+
+\bitem \LaTeX{} is essentially quasi-static in contrast with
+ plain, which is frozen and hence stable. I know that dynamics is the
+ nature of progress, but only a small amount needs change.
+ The lack of the awareness to separate the quasi-static part
+ from the stable part, is what I don't like.
+\bitem The macros are essentially one-part macros with flexibility
+ via optional and ordinary parameters. The mechanism of parsing
+ optional arguments, is a non-\TeX{} approach, at the expense of
+ cumbersome and monolithic coding.
+ Two-part macros should be at the basis,
+ with options via token variables. As far as my experience goes
+ this will yield simpler coding, with the benefits of
+ easier maintenance.
+\bitem \LaTeX{} is verbose and far from minimal markup
+\bitem \LaTeX{} is not easy to customize
+\bitem \LaTeX's macros are incompatible with plain, even the use of
+ \cs{def} is not possible\ftn{I know of the annoyance
+ of silently redefined macros, but nevertheless.}
+\bitem \LaTeX{} turns out to be a cuckoo's egg
+\bitem \LaTeX{} tends to represent the establishment,
+ not what individuals really need, IMHO, with all respect.
+ The imposing character is believed to be beneficial for
+ publishers, to ascertain that authors don't use markup
+ different from the standard style. Much truth in there, but the
+ world is changing. I favour simple tools,
+ which I understand to a high degree, and which are cooperative.
+\smallbreak
+I only hope that the \LaTeX{} developers can take advantage of my views.
+
+^^{TUGboat styles}
+\bluehead TUGboat styles
+
+I learned a lot from those. The functionality of the OTR has
+been taken over in BLUe's format.
+It is just a pity that a preprint style is lacking.
+I also consider the approach of the separate streams
+\TeX{} next to \LaTeX, cumbersome to maintain.
+At the lower level separate collections are in use next to each other.
+For example the verbatim macros for \TeX{} differ from those for \LaTeX.
+A common picture environment for both streams is not there either.
+Similar to the AMS formats the coding is monolithic.
+It is not easy to borrow parts from it.
+
+\displaycenterline{Not a common \TeX{} format with a \LaTeX{}
+ user interface on top.}
+
+I have used them for quite a while, but once I looked into the code,
+I decided to go over to the manmac line of thought, back to the roots,
+so to say, with all respect.
+
+\bluehead The future
+
+More important, and thinking positively, is to day-dream about the future
+and especially to ponder about the new media to assist information
+production and consumption.
+
+It is a little peculiar that I sympathize so much with the new media,
+the newer developments, which will make it possible for the
+ \displaycenterline{masses to access information easily,}
+the more so because this file is much like a traditional book.
+It does not combine different media like text, sound, colours or graphics
+in general. Not even does it allow you to click through the file
+in a hyperlink sense. I'm not ashamed of that.
+There are so many problems to be solved,
+before we come even close to coping better
+with information, I mean taking real advantage of the information.
+
+The buzzword which goes along
+with this is the `electronic highway,'
+having rapid and cheap access to
+information stored digitally.
+Perhaps the words `database publishing,' and
+`multi-media' appeal even more.
+Whatever the value of these approaches and promises,
+let us down-to-earth ponder
+about electronic equivalents of the old goodies, such as
+a table of contents,
+an index,
+and cross-references.
+
+
+\thissubhead{\runintrue}
+\bluesubhead A Table of Contents\par is getting more and more important.
+When tables of contents, ToCs for short, are generated automatically,
+which is nice, they can't be searched for in a script.
+A surprising consequence is to store a ToC also explicitly,
+and perhaps separately from the work, because
+people first like to browse through a table of contents or
+read.me file.
+For electronic use the page numbers attached are not that important.
+How to access parts is more important. Therefore the ToC should contain
+hyperlinks to the real information.
+
+\thissubhead{\runintrue}
+\bluesubhead An Index\par is also no longer tied up with one book.
+Databases can be searched on keywords, or more selectively browsed via queries,
+to spot what one is looking for, whatever the context.
+When we have spotted what we are looking for,
+another click would be all that is needed to get
+into it.\ftn{Let us forget, for the moment, the reality of
+ the morning-after invoice.}
+
+\thissubhead{\runintrue}
+\bluesubhead Cross-referencing\par is really outdated.
+Electronically, we are not limited by the traditional sequential
+order of numbered pages. Relational links are there to
+bring you immediately to the material required, be it to more details or
+to just the opposite, a survey, with fewer details,
+or, \dots\thinspace another representation, like spoken
+in a different language.
+
+\thissubhead{\runintrue}
+\bluesubhead The bad news\par is that none of those goodies mentioned are
+part of this work. Just an afterthought, some wishful thinking,
+pondering about future work.
+
+Frank Poppe communicated that he would be happy with the \TeX book script
+with hyperlinks. That he could easily click through the related material
+spread over the file. Indeed that would be nice.
+
+\bluehead Statistics about processing PWT
+
+The booklet contains in the draft version of spring {\oldstyle1995},
+{\oldstyle125} odd pages and some
+{\oldstyle400} index entries,
+all processed in one pass.
+The sorting of the index did take an hour on my Mac Classic II,
+and {\oldstyle10}K words of memory.
+For re-runs without page changes one can do without \cs{sortindex}
+because \cs{pasteupindex} reads from index.elm.
+\begincenterblock
+{\oldstyle967} strings out of {\oldstyle5259}
+{\oldstyle4438} string characters out of {\oldstyle31539}
+{\oldstyle63053} words of memory out of {\oldstyle65536}
+{\oldstyle2531} multiletter control sequences out of {\oldstyle10000}
+{\oldstyle18} hyphenation exceptions out of {\oldstyle307}
+{\oldstyle22}i,{ \oldstyle21}n,{\oldstyle16}p, {\oldstyle216}b,%
+ {\oldstyle1015}s stack positions
+out of {\oldstyle200}i, {\oldstyle60}n,{\oldstyle60}p, {\oldstyle5000}b, {\oldstyle2000}s
+\endcenterblock
+Remark. The needed save-stack size is larger than the usual default\Dash
+ as of {\oldstyle1995}\Dash for a PC.
+\endinput