X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["2712" "Tue" "24" "November" "1998" "15:19:04" "+0100" "Chris Rowley" "C.A.Rowley@OPEN.AC.UK" nil "59" "Re: What is \"base\" LaTeX" "^Date:" nil nil "11" nil nil nil nil nil] nil) Received: from listserv.gmd.de (listserv.gmd.de [192.88.97.1]) by mail.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA04550; Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:20:30 +0100 (MET) Received: from lsv1.listserv.gmd.de (192.88.97.2) by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <7.644FBB9E@listserv.gmd.de>; Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:20:11 +0100 Received: from RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8b) with spool id 411196 for LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:19:59 +0100 Received: from ixgate01.dfnrelay.d400.de (ixgate01.dfnrelay.d400.de [193.174.248.1]) by relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA18522 for ; Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:19:57 +0100 (MET) X400-Received: by mta d400relay in /PRMD=dfnrelay/ADMD=d400/C=de/; Relayed; Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:19:15 +0100 X400-Received: by mta venus in /PRMD=uk.ac/ADMD= /C=gb/; Relayed; Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:15:05 +0100 X400-Received: by mta fell.open.ac.uk in /PRMD=UK.AC/ADMD= /C=GB/; Relayed; Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:14:31 +0100 X400-Received: by mta UK.AC.MHS-RELAY.SUN2 in /PRMD=uk.ac/ADMD= /C=gb/; Relayed; Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:19:04 +0100 X400-Originator: C.A.Rowley@open.ac.uk X400-Recipients: non-disclosure:; X400-MTS-Identifier: [/PRMD=UK.AC/ADMD= /C=GB/;<13914.46799.156940.839436@fell.] X400-Content-Type: P2-1988 (22) Content-Identifier: Re: What is (... Alternate-Recipient: Allowed References: <199811142302.AAA24385@na6.mathematik.uni-tuebingen.de>, <365A9F55.88C46733@na.uni-tuebingen.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: VM 6.44 under Emacs 19.34.1 Message-ID: <13914.46799.156940.839436@fell.open.ac.uk> Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project In-Reply-To: <13914.43859.281032.18501@srahtz> Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:19:04 +0100 From: Chris Rowley Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: What is "base" LaTeX Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 2895 Sebastian does seem a little less comprehensible than usual these days: maybe XML/XSL has this affect on people? I guess that I, above all, must comment on his concerns since I am both a major beneficiary of his, no doubt, enormous contributions to the collection plate at St Albion's, and also a major sinner according to his fundamentalist theological stance (an opinion which he has recently stated far more forcefully and personally in another context). > i do have one last (trite) remark - why are you (the academic authors > reading this) spending so much time on arguing about typesetting and > publishing? why don't you spend my tax money on doing research into > your subject......? There has always (I suspect) been, and continues to be, a very close relationship between the producers of complex mathematical manu/compuscripts and the providers of the technology to make it easily available to others. I can (not quite from memory:-) trace this back at least 40 years to when very famous, high-quality, publicly-funded UK mathematicians worked closely with Monotype and CUP in developing the 5-line math system, and the fonts to go with it. I am sure that something similar happened in the US. Knuth's efforts were to a large extent motivated by his interest in maths (he has a very high reputation as a research mathematician). The recent large amount of activity in the math fonts area has also been driven largely by concerned mathematicians, either directly or via learned societies such as the AMS. I could go on ... I hope that it is clear why we research mathematicians feel it is necessary and useful to spend time on this. If not, I shall explain in detail. I have one illustration of this in the front of my mind since in the last two weeks I have spent a large amount of time instructing the copy-editor of a research maths book with my name on it. The publisher, who, as is always the case with things produced by me and my colleagues, is also the typesetter, is small but has a very high reputation in modern mathematics publishing. The copy-editor was, however, new to the company and the subject; he therfore turned the very literate mathematics of myself and co-authors into even more literate prose in which the mathematical meaning was lost or, in some case, completely altered. This is not quite on the level of typesetting technology but the principle is the same: the tradition of knowing what is needed resides almost entirely within the mathematical community, so we must be involved whatever the tax-payers think. chris PS: And I shall arrange a small personal refund to Sebastian to cover the minute proportion of my time that I spend on this kind of thing.