From e0c6872cf40896c7be36b11dcc744620f10adf1d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2019 13:46:59 +0900
Subject: Initial commit

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+
+\title{Something is happening, but you don't know what it is}
+\author[Peter J. Cameron]{Peter J. Cameron\\
+School of Mathematical Sciences\\Queen Mary
+and Westfield College\\Mile End Road\\London
+E1 4NS}
+\begin{Article}
+
+This is intended as a worm's-eye view of what is happening to
+\TeX\ in the mathematical community at present. It seems
+to me that there are some problems.
+
+I have earned my living as a mathematician for 24 years.
+For half that time, the tools of my trade included a portable
+typewriter and large quantities of Tipp-Ex, and all formulae
+were written in by hand. For the next six years, I used various
+word processors; no more Tipp-Ex, but still handwritten formulae.
+Then I discovered \TeX, and took to it with the inevitability of
+a love affair. Is it always so difficult for a love affair to
+last? \TeX\ and I have started having problems, and perhaps the
+fault isn't all mine. Maybe we should have some counselling.
+
+\TeX\ fills two roles in the working life of a mathematician, and
+early on I fell into the trap of confusing them. On one hand,
+it is for producing masterpieces of the typesetter's art; this
+was such a delight! For this reason, early on I rejected \LaTeX:
+I was unable to make a \LaTeX\ document look good; and while
+ordinary mortals can write or edit \TeX\ macros, only superheroes
+can mess with \LaTeX\ style files. In plain \TeX, with the help of
+invented or adapted macros and a variety of fonts, I made everything
+from books, through class exercise sheets, to character sheets for
+my son's role-playing games, all stamped with my own design
+(for better or worse).
+
+The other aspect of \TeX\ relevant to mathematics is its function
+as a communication standard. Several things contributed to this,
+for most of which we have Knuth to thank. Most important is its
+free availability on all platforms, and the fact that the input is
+ASCII text without control characters, so that it can be sent
+by email without damage (even to and from the UK nowadays, although
+it wasn't always so!). Gone are the days when international
+collaboration involved exchange of letters taking weeks, with the
+inevitable crossing of information. I can now exchange drafts of
+papers with co-authors almost instantaneously (though, of course,
+time differences mean that I usually have to wait a day for a reply
+from Australia).
+
+Another significant fact is that email and \TeX\
+provide a mechanism for communicating formulae in an email letter.
+Between \TeX-literate correspondents, such snippets of \TeX\ are
+never compiled (except, arguably, in biological computers).
+
+Besides the two mentioned above, a third factor has contributed to
+establishing this standard. Knuth, as a mathematician, designed the
+plain macros to be as close as possible to the way that formulae are
+pronounced by mathematicians. Thus, \verb|x \over y| produces
+$x\over y$. (One of the few exceptions to this is that we have to
+say \verb|\bar x| rather than \verb|x \bar| to get $\bar x$.)
+
+My first encounter with \TeX, before I knew what it was, came about
+when an editor sent me a referee's report in uncompiled form. The
+dollar signs were a bit mysterious, but if I ignored them, the
+rest made quite good sense!
+
+Regrettably, many popular macro packages have lost sight of this
+point, and seem obsessed with the need for all operators to be
+prefix. Mathematicians, brought up with the infix and postfix
+arithmetic operations, are free from this artificial hang-up, and
+never refer to $x\over y$ as \verb|\frac{x}{y}|. (Well, maybe not
+quite --- but this is certainly true for formulae simple enough to
+be put into a letter.)
+
+Now there is a clear conflict between these two roles of \TeX.
+It was borne in on me when I wanted to send my beautifully-crafted
+preprints to other people. At best, I could send along several macro
+files, and assume that my correspondents could follow the instructions
+for naming and using them and cope with the organisational problem.
+At worst, the recipient would lack a font I'd used, and would be
+unable to print the document at all. So, inevitably, I was forced
+into keeping two copies of each file, a fancy one for myself, and a
+plain one for everyone else. This made updating the files a nightmare,
+especially when one was at home and the other at work. The next stage
+was to abandon the fancy files, and keep everything as plain as
+possible!
+
+These problems, if understandable, were at least self-inflicted. But
+it seems to me that the academic/publishing community is now falling
+into the same trap.
+
+It is now very common for publishers to encourage electronic submission
+of manuscripts. Among the specialist journals in my field, with one
+rogue exception which specifies WordPerfect (stop laughing at the back!),
+the system of choice is \LaTeX, with a proprietary style file to
+reproduce the existing look of the journal. Some of these style files
+are less than perfect. (One publisher, attempting a clever redefinition
+of \verb|\emptyset|, ended up leaving this command undefined. Another
+insists on printing the journal's copyright message on my preprints.)
+
+Often, these style files tempt the author with added features, from
+the trivial (an \verb|\email| command to print the author's email
+address) to the valuable (a \verb|proof| environment for the proofs
+of theorems). If you bite the apple, you can no longer compile your
+paper in ordinary \LaTeX, and so you can no longer email it to your
+collaborators. Yet some of the features are too good to miss, and the
+journal makes others compulsory. So, once again, I have to maintain
+two copies of my files.
+
+Further problems are caused by the proliferation of \LaTeX\ versions
+and font selection schemes. Rather than stick to the lowest common
+denominator, some journals provide elaborate format-switching
+mechanisms whose instructions are very difficult to decode.
+
+Electronic journals pose still more problems. We are told that this
+is the way of the future, and that traditional journals will quickly
+die out. Yet I am sure that many academics, (and not only in the 
+Third World), are unable to read or access these journals. We get
+busier and busier as time goes on, and installing Mosaic and all the
+necessary supporting software on your computer is a non-trivial job.
+And on a more mundane level: an otherwise excellent electronic
+journal in my field has, as virtually the only style specification,
+the use of \verb|cmcsc8| for the headline. This font is not in the
+em\TeX\ distribution. Fortunately, the \verb|.tfm| and
+\verb|.pk| files for this font were available on our Unix machines,
+so I was able to download them and correct the lack. How many
+beginning netsurfers would be deterred, by choice or necessity,
+by just such a small irritation?
+
+If publishers do force us into using discordant versions of \TeX\
+by such means, then the role of \TeX\ as the standard for mathematical
+communication will be threatened. If this is lost, one of the major
+advantages of \TeX\ over other systems will go with it. Can we
+save the situation? I do not believe that standards can be established
+by wishing for them, even by formalising the wishing into a committee.
+The only thing that seems to work is the commercial success of
+particular hardware or software. But what could we ask of \LaTeX3
+(or whatever is to be the standard)?
+Just two pleas come from the concerns I have raised:
+\begin{itemize}
+\item It must be possible to impose different styles with the
+absolute minimum  of change to the input file. This means that
+all publishers' requirements must be anticipated and default versions
+included in the standard style. Sounds totally impractical? But we
+know what happens if you don't!
+\item Either all the plain \TeX\ mathematical commands should be
+available, or the commands that are actually used should conform as closely
+as possible to spoken mathematics.
+\end{itemize}
+ 
+\end{Article}
+ 
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