Doing it my way: a lone T E Xer in the real world
Jean-luc Doumont · 1999
While a world-renowned standard in many academic fields, Don Knuth’s much acclaimed typesetting system is almost unknown in most parts of the real world, where many a document designer has achieved professional success without ever hearing (let alone pronouncing) the word “TEX”. Outside academia, the lone TEXer faces not only compatibility headaches, but also outright incomprehension from his customers, colleagues, or competitors: why would anyone want to use TEX to produce memos, two-color newsletters, full-color brochures, overhead transparencies, and other items ‐ in short, anything but books that contain a lot of mathematics? As a consultant in professional communication, I have been using TEX for all documents I have produced for my clients and for myself during the last ten years or so. Though it has turned out to be most successful, this approach is seen by most as a mere idiosyncrasy. And yet, the systematic use of my own TEX and PostScript programming gives me three unequalled advantages over using off-the-shelf software: I travel light, I can go anywhere I please, and I guarantee I’ll get there.