general issues

[Efraim Yawitz]

Since the list is kind of quiet, I thought this might be an opportunity to
air some questions I have about the future of Lout and "batch
text-processing" in general.

How does Lout (or TeX or groff) compare with such programs as QuarkXpress
for example?  I'm not really familiar with it, but it seems that the GUI
programs are very popular, and it is natural to wonder whether the
non-interactive approach will survive at all.  (I was additionally
stimulated to think about this by hearing from someone yesterday that he
might be able to find me a job with a newspaper if I knew Quark.)  Do the
GUI tools do everything that batch programs can do, and vice versa?

I think it's really beautiful to see people producing free software for
the public, and in particular, this seems to be something that we should
have hoped that academic computer science would be providing, but is this
particular branch of free software still alive, or is it just a sort of
holdback of the academic world?  (As an aside, I think these programs
could benefit from a change of name, although I guess it's kind of
late.  QuarkXPress sounds a lot cooler than TeX or Lout, not to mention
troff, groff, etc.)

I'm not trying to start any arguments, I just am uninformed and know of
nowhere else to ask this.  If anyone, especially the moderator, thinks
this is irrelevant, I will be happy to be quiet.

All the Best,

Efraim Yawitz