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TeX pestilence (was Distributed RVS, Darcs, tech love)

Xah Lee xah at xahlee.org
Mon Oct 22 08:50:30 EDT 2007 
TeX, in my opinion, has done massive damage to the computing world.

i have written on this variously in emails. No coherent argument, but
the basic thoughts are here:
http://xahlee.org/cmaci/notation/TeX_pestilence.html

it's slightly repeatitous there. But i think i might summarize in gist
the few fundanmental issues, all sterm from just the first one:

1. A typesetting system per se, not a mathematical expressions
representation system.

2. The free nature, like cigeratte given to children, contaminated the
entire field of math knowledge representation into 2 decades of
stagnation.

3. Being a typesetting system, brainwashed entire generation of
mathematicians into micro-spacing doodling.

4. Inargurated a massive collection of documents that are invalid
HTML. (due to the programing moron's ingorance and need to idolize a
leader, and TeX's inherent problem of being a typesetting system that
is unsuitable of representing any structure or semantics)

5. This is arguable and trivial, but i think TeX judged as a computer
language in particular its syntax, on esthetical grounds, sucks in
major ways.

Btw, a example of item 4 above, is Python's documentation. Fucking
asses and holes.

  Xah
  xah at xahlee.org
  http://xahlee.org/
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