Re: inappropriateness....

[Daniel Say say@xxxxxxxx]

further to the TeX reference, while there have been
some discussion of Postscript files as the final
product, fed through GoScript as a viewer and universal
printer driver, "the other side" (Notabene listserv)
is having a discussion on using LaTeX drivers ahs

device-independent files for local proofing and sending
to a 2400 dot-per-inch (metric?) commercial printer later.

The work is written in XY (NotaBene, NB) and then parsed
for LaTeX codes, much as Postscript does, adding a 'prolog'
of information. See below.

---- quoting

Date:     Wed, 26 Nov 1997 22:47:02 CET
Reply-To: Nota Bene List 
Sender: Nota Bene List 
From: Guido Milanese 
Subject:   Re: NB4LaTeX
Content-Length: 2610

On 24-Nov-97 you wrote:
≫ Many thanks for sharing your Nota Bene utility programs with
≫ us. I appreciate this very much. I have already downloaded
≫ the programs from your website.
≫ I am very interested in TeX. I have heard of this program
≫ often. Would you please tell us the advantages of TeX? Is
≫ TeX difficult to learn and use? Also, does NB4LaTeX work
≫ with Lingua files?

Thank you for your kind words. Answers:

(1) Advantages of TeX. It is (I believe) the best typesetting
program available nowadays. I know several other systems, because
I like to do myself the typesetting of my books, and I decided
that TeX is really superior to the other typesetting programs.
Another advabtage is that a file produced with TeX is completely
independent from the printer drivers, which means that you can
print a lot of proofs with your printer and send the final
version to the typesetter to print it with a 2400 dpi printer.
>From this point of view, it is as Postscript, but the fonts are
particularly designed for that particular size, printer and
resolution, which makes the final output excellent.
Disadvantages: you cannot edit a complex TeX file without a
preprocessor (it's too difficult. My program uses NB4 as a
preprocessor for LaTeX.

(2) I do not use "plain TeX" but LaTeX, an implementation that
uses TeX as engine but with a collection of powerful macros. If
you use NB4LaTeX, you will not have much to do with LaTeX. Edit
your NB4 file and convert the file at the final stage. To learn
the language, there are several introductions to LaTeX, mostly in
English bu also in German and French. To give you an example,
this NB4 string:

  this is ≪MDIT≫italics≪MDNM≫, and this is
  ≪MDSU≫superscript≪MDNM≫. Period.

will be translated as

 this is \textit{italics},
 and this is \textsuperscript{superscript}. Period.

(3) My program has a limited support for Lingua files: only Greek
and all the symbols for logic, phonetics etc. No Hebrew or
Cyrillic. The program was originally written to print my books,
and I use Greek a lot but never Russian, and almost never Hebrew.
    Best regards,
% Guido Milanese                      %
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# Homepage in Italian: http://www.mclink.it/personal/MC1194 #
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