Mark Steinberger's contribution reminded me to take up another of
Sebastian's assertions: that the use of TeX is declining.

This is certainly true of some of the worlds I inhabit and this is
neither surprising nor worrying given the number of free and expensive
(and in-between) systems now available that are reasonably easy to use
and produce reasonable results.

However, in other of my worlds (in particular the one that Mark also
hangs out in quite a lot) the use of TeX is increasing very rapidly
and ihas become simply "part of the furniture".

This has led to (as I see it) an unfortunate attitude, particularly on
the aprt of some very powerful people, that I would summarise as
follows:

  Classic TeX must remain unchanged and be used for ever.

Classic here means: pk cm (note not ec) fonts; hand entry with dumb
editors; nothing hyper; ...

Somewhat worrying?


chris