FreeBSD as a development platform

Yes. You're right. My mistake. (I'm a big fan, pro-speaker and defender of TeX/LaTeX, and opponent of wordprocessors. :cool: )

But since I already used LaTeX on my Amiga 2000 in the early 1990s today I don't care much if compilation of a TeX-File takes 1 second or 1.5 seconds 😁 or if a toolchain contains a couple of Megabytes more....

But then what isn't overkill - especially wordprocessors?
Writing config files in XML is ultra-hyperkill (not to say nonsense.)
But that would change the topic.
 
Profighost said:
if a toolchain contains a couple of Megabytes more....
Click to expand...
I got sick of gigabytes of yearly updates and version collisions because debuntu brought EOL TeXlives for months and nothing worked. Several years in a row.

Since then (was it 2014?) I use plain text + vim + :hardcopy to print my formal letters. Like https://mro.name/2022/brief-dina4.txt. All else I write either by hand on paper or in HTML. Never looked back.
 
I find version collisions under Linux so very annoying that to me Linux is for people who's interest in computers is not using but fixing them. 😜

I also used TeXlive-systems. Once they are discontinued, or you change the system (me from MS Windows -> FreeBSD) one may face problems.
Main problem for me was different textencodings, which under FreeBSD with according tools can be fixed quickly and easily.
But since I use LaTeX purely with vim and within the shell I never faced any version collisions since FreeBSD 11something.

But, of course, it also depends on how/where you publish - and handwriting is something very good, exemplary (except my handwriting is unacceptable chicken scratch 😁 )

"plain text + vim + :hardcopy to print formal letters."
is something I find completely sufficient and exemplary.
After all the result nothing but typewriter - absolutely Okay in my eyes.
 
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This as gone out of the roof. I see that TeX does the same job as vim. Is the different product that each can do that makes the gap between them.
 
Rock said:
I see that TeX does the same job as vim. Is the different product
Click to expand...
Sorry, but I cannot follow you.
vim is a texteditor which produces text such as source code.
TeX/LaTeX is a markuplanguage, which compiles a source.tex file to output.dvi (or *.ps, or *.pdf)
If you don't put anything but \begin{document} some text \end{document} in source.tex TeX will produce something similar like :hardcopy under vim - then I could understand your point.
But normally you start with a header with something like \documentclass[ ... which produces something vim (or any texteditor) cannot.
So, what did I miss?
 
Well, as you said, normally TeX start with a header that vim only takes as text. That extra TeX step is what you miss. They do the same job unless you add that step.
 
Deleted member 43773 said:
vim is a texteditor which produces text such as source code.
Click to expand...
vim has a command :hardcopy > foo.ps that creates a postscript file. Give it a try if you haven't. That's what I send to my printer, put into an envelope and send to e.g. tax authorities.

It looks like written with a typewriter which I find quite appropriate. I never got a discount all those years I sent it in computer modern.
 
Age might have something to do with it as well.

I think a lot of people don’t realize that C is THE world-changing high-level language.
 
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