Re: [help-3dldf] (no subject)

[Laurence Finston]

On Mon, 6 Dec 2004, Martijn van Manen wrote:

> I know that LaTeX can not be incorporated in texinfo.
> I use LaTeX to easily write the thing. First write
> it, then format it.

You may do as you like, of course, but using LaTeX will make more work
for someone, either you or me.

> I wanted to discourage you from installing the whole
> LaTeX tree because I noticed that in Debian, if you have
> the full LaTeX ( I need this everyday ) and you install cweb,
> you get trouble. Your LaTeX becomes dysfunctional. Same deal
> the other way around.

I don't have root privileges on any machine.  The computer center here
uses SUSE Linux and I'm pretty sure LaTeX is installed.  I had to ask to
have CWEB installed, but I believe it's included in a standard SUSE
installation.

I prefer Debian to the commercial Linux distributions, because it's free
(in the sense of freedom), but people have contacted me a couple of times
about problems that have cropped up in connection with 3DLDF on
Debian installations.

> Wouldn't it work the same way with texi2dvi?

MetaPost just runs TeX or LaTeX in a separate process in order to generate
`pictures' containing the labels, whereas Texinfo is a package
analogous to LaTeX, i.e., it defines TeX macros.  The LaTeX macros are
extremely complex and not compatible with the Texinfo macros.

Someone recently asked about using LaTeX in Texinfo on the
address@hidden' mailing list, and the answer was that it wouldn't
work.  The Texinfo project also has no plans to change this.

I find that LaTeX works well if one can use one of the predefined
formats without making too many changes.  I prefer using TeX using
plain TeX or writing my own formats based on plain TeX.
Using TeX and reading and rereading _The TeXbook_ played an important
part in making me realize that programming could
be a creative activity.

Laurence