Timothy Murphy wrote on Tue, 8 Jul 2003 10:28:19 +0100 > On Tuesday 08 July 2003 02:49, Reinhard Kotucha wrote: > > Believe me, I know where beginners have problems. Noone had problems > > with spaces, they can use any feature described in a book. > > I agree completely. > The whole basis for the proposal -- > that students find LaTeX syntax difficult -- > is entirely misconceived. > A student who can prove the Implicit Function Theorem > is unlikely to be baffled by the (not very difficult) rule > about spaces after \commands. I fully agree - and not only students. A competent typist who is accustomed to writing stuff in M$-Word or something similar can pick up the essentials of writing stuff in LaTeX in a few hours - not the many hours Micro$oft people claim is required for training. [deletions] > Knuth was right 99.9% of the time. And for the remaining 0.1% (a) find a simpler way to do what you want to do, or (b) consult a more experiences person, or (c) ask for help on comp.text.tex, or (d) delete the offending bit of your document and think of another way. Incidentally, if anyone has received email allegedly coming from me, with the header suggesting that Microsoft Outlook was the mail agent, it's bogus. An assortment of stuff is going around in which someone has spoofed my email address. Have a look at the header on this message to see a genuine header for email from me. > -- > Timothy Murphy > e-mail: [log in to unmask] > tel: +353-86-233 6090 > s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland Ken Smith [log in to unmask]