Re: Bibliography & ToC placement

[Valeriy E. Ushakov]

On Tue, Feb 17, 1998 Victor Sudakov wrote:

> > Yes, you choose paper type and
> > orientation from the setup file.
> 
> I do not think it is a good idea. Especially in the multiuser environment
> and when you have different documents on different paper types. I believe it
> would be better to be able to change this from the document preamble.

What does multiuser environment has to do with this?  And why in the
word do you think that setup file is not a document preamble?  "Setup"
*is* *the* document preamble.

If you want a different page type you will most probably want to
change margins and might be few other parameters as well.  Do you
propose to drag all this from @DocumentLayout to document type symbol
(@Report, @Book) too?

Copy a 'report' or 'book' to the directory where your document resides
and rename it to say, setup.lt, edit it to reflect your requirements
and @Include { setup } instead of @SysInclude { report }.  If you have
a number of typical setups useful for several users at your site put
modified setup files into lout's include directory.

Also I suggest you to type man lout and search for "--<opt>" (without
quotes).  And read that paragraph on setting options from command
line.  It probably does what you need.


> Lout is great software, because:
> 
> 1. It is free
> 2. It is available for Unix.
> 
> This is why I use it. 

These criteria are *completely* irrelevant to the qualities of Lout as
a document formatter.  Groff and TeX are both free and are both
available for Unix.


> But if it were commercial and available for Windows only (like Microsoft
> Word), it would not be able to compete with Word. I am afraid very few
> people would buy it. Not because Word is wysiwyg while Lout is not. Just
> because Lout lacks some important things (or I have not found them yet, in
> which case my sincere apologies to all Lout users and Lout author.).

Do you ever bother to read what you write?  You make two points:

  1. Lout is free and runs on Unix so it's great.

  2. If this *very same* Lout were proprietary and ran on Windows, it
     would be a pile of sh^H^Hcompost that nobody would like to buy
     and use.

Not only this is contradictory but this is [expletive deleted]
IRRELEVANT!  Lout is a document formatter, let's evaluate it as such.
If you want to say that Lout lacks some features, just say that and,
if possible, provide typical scenarios where this lack of feature gets
in the way.


> Take, for example, the MS Word or WordPerfect concept of styles which is
> totally absent in Lout. The idea of defining a style which describes
> everything (font size and face, paragraph alignment, line numbering, list
> format, language etc etc etc) and then assigning the style to a paragraph
> with a single command is so attractive that I am still missing it in Lout.

Check your facts.  I never heard anything more bogus than accusing
Lout that it lacks the notion of style.  Lout provides all this though
in a much more disciplined way.

Determined programmer can write Fortran program in any language! :-(

If you are familiar with Word concepts and you are productive when you
use Word go back and use Word, WordPerfect, whatever, and feel
comfortable that way.  Lout is not meant as a batch reimplementation
of Word.  It has very peculiar model that has its strong and weak
sides.

> I am also missing mathematical calculations in tables - this is very
> useful. I remember using it a lot when years ago I worked with
> WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, writing big reports.

*Lout* *is* *a* *document* *formatter*, *period*.


PS: I suggest you to think if/why you *really* want to use Lout.  It
    will save you from grief and us from bogus complaints.

    If this letter sounds too harsh then it's because it is.  In the
    last couple of weeks you have posted several messages that boils
    down to complaint that Lout is so different from Word.  If this
    makes you so unhappy, go and use the tool that suits your needs
    most.

SY, Uwe
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