Why Lout?

[Raúl Núñez de Arenas Coronado]

    Hello all :)

    I want to do some 'lout advocacy, too' ;))

    I mainly use Lout for the following reasons:

    - I tried TeX (the only I knew when I came into Unix), lots of
years ago, and it was quite frustrating. I took the TeXBook and it
helped a lot, but I couldn't understand most of LaTeX macros and TeX
documents where unreadable for me. Moreover, I couln't find any small
TeX distribution for Linux. I didn't like to waste 30Mb just for
formating a few documents. On the other hand Lout is small, powerful
and directly supports PostScript (IMHO the back-ends are unnecessary
and Lout will do perfectly with PS only. There are lots of tools for
transforming PS to text, PDF, etc...).

    - I liked WP 5.1 a lot, because I had control over the formatting
tags and the like. With Lout I have the same feeling. I know where
the things appear into the paper, and I have a good idea of formatting.
I like document preparation systems I can use under a text interface.
They are usually faster and less error-prone.

    - The programming style of Lout is simple but powerful. Excepting
galleys I understand most of concepts and I use the operators with
relative ease.

    - Lout, like Linux, allow the Do-It-Yourself paradigm. I can rid
of the Lout include files and do a document setup of my own. I like
this A LOT. I love do my own software, my own Linux distribution and
my own Lout document setup. The latter is being quite difficult, but
I'm quite new to Lout and I think I'm learning fast.

    - Lout is hi-quality software, small, robust and powerful. Not
that fatware out there just for writing letters. Thanks Jeff.

    Resuming: I'm using Lout for the same reasons I use Linux. The
Do-It-Yourself paradigm and the fact that I've tested and used
similar tools and Lout it's simply better for me. Linux too.

    I must thank Jeff for providing this tool with its documentation,
and Uwe for helping all of us.

    Raúl