From: mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere   
      
   Henrik Carlqvist  writes:   
      
   > On Wed, 08 Mar 2023 01:25:46 -0400, Mike Spencer wrote:   
   >   
   >> I don't have a word processor.  On the very rare occasions that I   
   >> need to print a business letter, I compose it in simple HTML and print   
   >> from the browser.   
   >   
   > HTML might work, but if you want really nice letters you should learn   
   > latex!   
      
   Ha! Until ca. '92 I used -- I forget, was it WordStar? -- a markup   
   word processor on CP/M with a dot matrix printer, business letters,   
   blacksmithing newsletter, assorted.  So when I was learning DOS, C,   
   Unix, Emacs and other new stuff around then, I actually bought   
   Knuth's TEXbook because I'd been told it was a markup system -- "you   
   should learn latex!" as you say.   
      
   But when I went to my shiny new Linux system a few years later, it had   
   Latex or Tetex or something that was a dialect of TEX.  I bumbled   
   about a bit but never found a tutorial that was simple enough to just,   
   yew kno, bang out a nice page.  All seemed too much like learning a   
   new programming language (yeah, I know what a macro is but...)  to   
   become a pro compositor.   
      
   With little printing to do and many other things to occupy my time, I   
   slacked off and never learned to use it.  Still have Knuth's book.   
      
   Is there an online tutorial PDF for Latex that's simple-minded?  I'm   
   never going to compose a glossy magazine page, advanced scientific   
   paper or legal brief and my ageing brain isn't going to master a mass   
   of arcana to be used, say, once a quarter.   
      
   > I have written some scripts using dialogs to input data about receiver   
   > and what to pay for and then the script generates latex code which is   
   > processed to a pdf file with the invoice.   
      
   All good.  I'm trying to imagine needing that....nope. :-)   
      
   --   
   Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)