At 15:28 09/02/2004, Adam Lindsay wrote:

Hi folks.

The below email showed up recently on the MacOSX/TeX list, and I thought it might be worthy of some ConTeXt-centric discussion. I have used Tex in the very distant past and recall it had tremendous capability but never tried using it for the many complex graphics applications which now are prerequisites for business. I would like to try Tex again, but thought it best to ask if Tex can now be used to create reasonably complicated color product brochures. The goal would be to produce brochures, newsletters, business proposals, and also "publish" data from databases that look as if from a high-end layout package such as Quark Express or something similar.

Can Tex be easily used for these type of functions?

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

We sometimes have projects where tex is used as an replacement for desktop publishing. On the average i think that tex can do most jobs that dtp programs can do and vice versa. Both have their pro's and con's - tex solutions demand a different way of thinking, which troubles communications with designers - using tex pays off quite well when it us used during the whole process (author -> book), since it diminishes the errors that may show up dur to dtp-ing - if the design is done in a dtp system and needs to be turned into a style ... well, one then often finds out that the design is not that designed and filling in bits and pieces takes time - tex systems permit all kind of integrations, (semi)automated sub flows, etc - tex systems have a high degree of reusage, and becomes more profitable when many similar jobs need to be done - while tex (when applied well) can do a pretty good job on typesetting paragraphs, many of todays designers take their dtp program (quark or indesign) as the standard way of doing things, i.e. all kind of funny rules and 'best ways to do' and one can get headaches of trying to match illogic demands - some things can be done with tex that cannot be done with dtp systems but it takes some experience to find the solutions - the qualification 'highend' is not related to dtp or tex, but to the quality (consistency) of the design and the freedom you have in finetuning the style; i've made styles for automated typesetting of layouts of moderate complexity (adaptive graphics and so) based on designs by designers, but the result seldom passes my own quality control if it comes to the typesetting (not a tex problem, more a specification problem) - there are many documents around that have properly typeset math but for the rest look *** which makes it hard to sell tex if you don't have counter examples at hand - etc, etc so, - TeX can be used for these type of functions - if this is 'easy' depends on your skills - if this is doable depends on your customers (being open minded and so) - ons should use the tools that suits the job (can be both dtp or tex or a mixture) in any case, - i still have to find something that cannot be done in tex (apart from page by page made up documents but that's a different game anyway) Hans ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE/POD/CTS Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- information: http://www.pragma-ade.com/roadmap.pdf documentation: http://www.pragma-ade.com/showcase.pdf -------------------------------------------------------------------------