Where we stand

["Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>]

    When generating documentation myself, I generally stick to a few simple,
    readable conventions to indicate -emphasis-, CODE, <meta-variables>,
    .section names, etc.  Then a couple of TECO macros generally suffice to
    convert the result to TeX input or whatever, when the time comes for fancy
    output.  I don't know if a group can work this way, but it sure would be
    nice to be able to work with readable text.  I want to be able to get
    proposed text in my mailbox, and not have to run it through TeX in order to
    read it without donning my kludge-proof goggles.

It seems to me that it would be somewhat easier to create a set of TECO
macros to strip off any TEX formatting stuff you don't want to see.  It
takes a serious amount of AI for a teco macro to know whether "I" in
some text is normal English or if it is a variable name that should be
converted to computerfont.

My view is that at least half the time I'm going to be looking at the
paper version of this stuff, and I want that to look halfway decent.
The rest of the time I'll be looking at it on a workstation with a
hi-res screen, and if I don't like the way the TeX input looks there,
it's easy enough to whip up some kludge that display TeX files in some
approximation to how they will look on paper.

-- Scott