path: root/info/laan/pwt/pwt.aft

\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