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+\newcommand{\NW}{Norm}
+
+\title{Book Review --- `Making \TeX\ Work'}
+\author[Malcolm Clark]{Malcolm Clark\\
+\texttt{m.clark@warwick.ac.uk}}
+\begin{Article}
+
+\begin{verbatim}
+@book{Walsh94,
+ title="Making TeX Work",
+ author="Norman Walsh",
+ publisher="O'Reilly &
+ Associates, Inc.",
+ address="Sebastopol, CA",
+ ISBN="1-56592-051-1",
+ pages=483}
+\end{verbatim}
+
+This is truly a niche market book. Until I read it, I didn't realise
+there was a need for it. Basically it tries to describe the many tools
+and tool fragments which exist for use with \TeX\ (and \MF). In
+general terms we are talking of tools available through the Internet,
+and most probably those available at your nearest convenient \CTAN\
+host. It is therefore encyclopedic rather than especially
+profound. You are unlikely to gain any new insights into the working
+of \TeX\ and its friends, but you will probably meet lots of new
+friends, whose existence you never even imagined (I excuse a couple of
+people from this: almost inevitably our esteemed editor will be aware
+of everything mentioned here, and probably has a list of other tools
+which should have been included). Given the nature of the Internet
+world, and \TeX, this can be no more than a snapshot which is probably
+already out of date: for example, the IP address for
+\texttt{ftp.tex.ac.uk} has changed.\footnote{For the curious, it is now
+128.232.1.87 --- Editor}
+
+The book was first published in April 1994, and by July had been
+reprinted with `minor corrections'. The reprinted edition was one of
+the goodies at this year's TUG conference in Santa Barbara, Thank you
+O'Reilly \& Associates, Inc.
+
+\NW{} describes \CTAN\ as `a fully-mirrored anonymous FTP hierarchy on
+three continents' -- but the three continents are North America,
+Europe and, er, Europe. He makes the common mistake of equivalencing
+UK with England. World Wide Web makes an appearance indirectly, rather
+than as a \CTAN\ supported service (so much easier to use); to be fair
+he does mention the WWW interface available through O'Reilly's server,
+\begin{verbatim}
+http://jasper.ora.com/CTAN/ctan.html
+\end{verbatim}
+If you try this \textsc{url}\footnote{If you are
+confused by all this stuff, help may be at hand. We hope
+that a future edition of \BV\ will discuss the
+\TeX\ resources available through World Wide Web, and give
+some clear pointers, as well as filling in some of the
+background.}, you will find it would have been better
+to go straight to
+\begin{verbatim}
+http://jasper.ora.com/ctan.html
+\end{verbatim}
+You may be concluding by now that we are strongly oriented towards electronic
+networks. This is true, although \NW{} does list some ways of obtaining
+distributions through more traditional means. But imagine you wanted to get
+hold of em\TeX\ or Oz\TeX: \NW{} merely refers you to \CTAN\ for em\TeX\
+and omits any contact at all for Oz\TeX. This despite the trailer at the
+end of every UKTeX Digest
+ list with details of how to obtain this software on disc.
+Similarly he seems to have missed the (admittedly fairly recent)
+\textsc{cd-rom} offerings from both the Dutch-speaking users group and from
+PrimeTime Software which contain gobs of material useful to those with and
+without electronic connection -- let's not forget that those of us on
+SuperJanet are still a minority. Many \TeX\ users still access a network (if
+they access one at all) over a telephone line, and the thought of downloading
+all these files, even if you can locate them, is daunting.
+
+We are also fairly Unix oriented. This is hardly surprising, given
+that this is an O'Reilly book, and they have made their name by
+producing books, which if not 100\% Unix in flavour, are at least very
+oriented towards Unix and GNU / Free Software Foundation. Thus
+there is a sort of assumption that you can probably write
+\emph{Perl}, and fairly readily modify the \emph{Perl} scripts
+which \NW{} includes. He uses \emph{Perl} because it is a scripting
+language available on all the platforms he discusses -- Unix, MSDOS
+(and Windows), OS/2 and the Macintosh. Sadly he doesn't tell me how to
+get hold of \emph{Perl}. It is this Unix bias which leads him to
+assert that `Unix is probably the most common \TeX\ platform' and to
+go on to note that the emphasis of the book is Unix workstations
+running X11 producing output for PostScript and HP LaserJet printers.
+
+\NW{} suggests that his description of \TeX\ is really for the systems
+administrator who wants to know a bit more about this behemoth which
+he has been persuaded to let occupy her or his system. The computer
+naive, or just those wanting to get on with some documents are given
+scant regard. Although he does include some discussion of Ms-dos and
+of OS/2, this is really because many tools have been ported to these
+platforms from Unix. The inclusion of the Macintosh is intriguing, but
+other than ghettoising it by giving it its own exclusive chapter out
+of the sixteen, it makes little appearance, and the repeated themes of
+command lines and restricted file names does demonstrate that it was
+something of an afterthought. The really useful fact of Mac filenames
+-- that they should not contain a blank space if you hope to use
+\LaTeX, is omitted.
+
+In general, there also seems to be a bias towards \TeX, rather than
+the more accessible extensions like \LaTeX, although again \NW{} does
+mention \LaTeX, Lollipop (a little surprisingly) and Texinfo
+(unsurprisingly, although again demonstrating the Unix bias).
+
+I have some misgivings when I start with \NW{}'s description `What is
+\TeX'. The first aesthetic principle which he ascribes to \TeX\ is:
+`The right margin is justified' (page~3). Besides being a rather
+contested aesthetic principle, \TeX\ of course allows you to set
+ragged right, or ragged left (or even both). He also claims `ladders
+are avoided'. None of my books on typography mention ladders: I assume
+them to be equivalent to rivers, and while this is certainly a claim
+by Knuth \& Plass, \emph{and} I have yet to see rivers created by
+\TeX, I'm still not convinced of its universal truth.
+
+I'm made uncomfortable by the first table (page~9), where among the
+special characters for plain \TeX, \NW{} suggests using \verb+<+ for
+!` (the usual recommendation is to access it by \verb+!`+), and
+\verb+>+ for ?` (usually \verb+?`+). This smacks of the shortcut `it
+works!' approach which always makes me nervous. He also notes the use
+of \verb+|+ to obtain an em-dash! I begin to despair. This way lies
+madness. And why would you want a `lone' tilde character or an
+underscore in your document? Yes I know they are widely used in Unix
+for paths in directory and file names, but that's hardly mainstream
+\TeX\ usage. I would be wary of defining a command \verb+\big+ in
+plain \TeX\ (as on page 100), since it could easily confuse maths
+typesetting (try \verb+\big\lbrace+ after you have redefined
+\verb+\big+). And it must be incorrect to maintain (page 21) that if a
+document contains `no forward references then it can be formatted in
+one pass'. If it contains no references at all, yes, this is true, but
+if there are any references (i.e.~\verb+\label+ commands) the
+\texttt{aux} file has to be written out fully and read again on the
+next run to resolve the reference(s). In reality this is hardly a
+problem. I've never yet been able to write a document in one `pass'.
+There is always some other reason for having to run \LaTeX\ again.
+Where it does matter is with a document you either receive, or one you
+pick up from a server. You have to know to run it \emph{at least}
+twice, and perhaps more times. Basically, keep running it until
+\LaTeX\ stops carping.
+
+To me a section entitled, `\TeX\ for beginners' contains a bizarre,
+almost oxymoronic, concept. I no longer believe that you should be
+taught \TeX, until you have mastered \LaTeX. If you need to go further
+than \LaTeX, then it is worthwhile finding out how \TeX\ works. Most
+of us don't really need to know first about macros and registers, far
+less `token lists' (unless of course we already have a few computer
+languages to our credit). There also seems to be some confusion in
+describing what \TeX\ is. \NW{} writes ``\TeX\ allows you to separate
+markup and layout. Logical divisions in the text (chapters, sections,
+itemized lists, etc.) are identified by control sequences''. Yes this
+is true, but it is closer to a description of \LaTeX. On page~14 we
+have a supposed comparison of \TeX\ and \emph{troff} commands,
+except the \TeX\ is \LaTeX. In passing, why \emph{troff}? Surely
+no-one would select \emph{troff} over \LaTeX\ given a free choice.
+Ten or fifteen years ago, and tied to Unix, maybe there was a contest,
+but today? Similarly the \TeX\ macros on page 43 are for \LaTeX\ (to
+be fair, he does say that they are from the \CTAN\ directory
+\texttt{macros/latex/contrib/misc} so I should have been able to work
+that one out by myself. If \NW{}'s contention was that to talk of
+\TeX\ was to imply \LaTeX, I wouldn't mind, but there is just too much
+jumble here, and even I'm getting confused. Am I just quibbling? I
+don't think so. The seeds of confusion are being sown.
+
+Having said all this, I think the book is very useful, and it contains
+answers to many questions. Just ignore the bits about \TeX\ and
+concentrate on the tools. It almost answered my query about PFM files
+and how to convert them to \texttt{tfm}s. Simply by recording where
+many things are in the \CTAN\ archives is a great boon. I can happily
+spend all day searching through \CTAN, but my chances of coming across
+something useful are slim. Now I have a better idea of what is there
+and my searching is more directed. In some areas \NW\ does go into
+reasonable detail -- for example the installation of em\TeX, or
+describing how to use new PostScript fonts in \TeX. He also usefully
+spends a little time and effort describing how to get pictures into
+\TeX, describing the problems and pitfalls, as well as actually doing
+it. It is a useful addition to my library of \TeX\ books, if only
+because it more easily enables me to answer those `is there a public
+domain driver for \textit{xxx}?' questions. I'm not sure I enjoy the
+format very much. Paragraphs without indentation and a paragraph
+separation of about one line height make me shudder a bit, but many
+manuals have this sort of form, and maybe that's what \NW\ wanted. I
+don't think it shows \TeX\ off to advantage, although he did make a
+real effort by eschewing Computer Modern and using Garamond instead.
+
+\end{Article}
+
+