Re: (La)TeX for a conlanger? Advice sought.

Hi!

Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...> writes:
> As a general note, there is also the LaTeX for Conlangers mailing
> list, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/latex-for-conlangers/.
>
> Emaelivpeith And Rosta:
> > (i) works a lot with truetype & unicode fonts,
> > (ii) is a typography fetishist,
>
> LaTeX addresses both of these points, and and is especially well-known
> for its superior typography. Your "ff fl fi" ligatures are correctly
> handled with LaTeX. :)
I'm a bit puzzled about your answer (i) here: I admit to be a bit
behind cutting edge Linux and LaTeX technology as my normal system is
some four years old, but is it the case that LaTeX can use Truetype
and/or Unicode fonts these days and that it reads the input in
e.g. UTF-8?

> > (iii) loathes the frustrations of trying to get complicated software to work
> > correctly or at all.
> > (iv) is reluctant to learn lots of elaborate & radically new ways of doing old familiar things;
>
> These two points are where LaTeX may give you trouble.
I never encountered much frustration with LaTeX.  But maybe looking up
control commands can become frustrating -- you definitely need a good
book.  LaTeX does not pretend to be Wysiwyg, so there is one layer of
complexity missing and it seldom behaves in seemingly incorrect ways.
And it never worked in unresolvably strange ways for me.  And it does
not crash, does not accidentally overwrite your input file with
garbage, which I'd consider frustrating at the least, etc. etc.  So
(iii) is a full pro-LaTeX point from my point of view.  Furthermore,
*usually* LaTeX files that are ten years old still work perfectly.
Sometimes, though, I wish I had written the files in PlainTeX since
unnecessary style renamings happen with LaTeX.

Of course, (iv) is a problem when you're used to Wysiwyg.  Although I
wouldn't call the new ways 'radically new'.  Anyway, that's a matter
of taste, of course.  I've always loved to see the control codes in
order to understand what the text processor does.  But of course, I'm
a programmer. :-)

**Henrik

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