[Tugindia] OFFTOPIC: FLOSS and the 'digital divide'

Kapil Hari Paranjape kapil at imsc.res.in
Sun Aug 15 05:25:04 CEST 2004


Hello,

On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 10:38:39AM +0530, Frederick Noronha (FN) wrote:
> In the world of TeX, what is the kind of contribution that FLOSS is making?

Most people in academics in the areas that I am aware of (mathematics,
theoretical physics and computer science) came to FLOSS via TeX.
Some explanation is in order:

1. The *default* version of most proprietary OSes does not include TeX
   and friends.

2. GNU and FSF decided very early on to use TeX at the base of its
   publication mechanism. Thus TeX was very much part of even the 
   earliest GNU/Linux distros such as SLS and Slackware.

3. Even for proprietary platform users, the FLOSS versions of TeX have
   often been the versions of TeX available in India for most people. 

To recall my own experience of TeX usage in chronological order:

a. (1988) MicroTeX (prop.) under DOS "shared" by a friend at TIFR.

b. (1989) Laser printer dvi driver "dvips" (FLOSS) early version
          downloaded in source and modified with T. Bhattacharya
	  to work under DOS at TIFR.

c. (1990) Adobe publisher (prop.) used during trip to MPI, Bonn.
	  under Macintosh and SunOS.
          This absolutely messed up a paper which had to be
	  subsequently re-typed using "vi"!

d. (1990) Karl Berry's web2c (FLOSS) used under SunOS during trip to U. of Chicago.

e. (1991) emTeX (FLOSS) used under DOS at TIFR.

f. (1993) nTeX (FLOSS) used under SLS or Slackware (memory fails me).

g. (1998) teTeX (FLOSS) used under Debian GNU/Linux.

I would imagine that for most "ancient" users like me the experience
would be rather similar. In particular, during the early to middle 90's
it was not easy to find the proprietary versions of TeX like VTeX and
Scientific Workplace(?) even to "share" with a friend.

Academic users of TeX who have stayed with proprietary operating systems
have not done so because of TeX---rather they have done so because of
the IMHO erroneneous impression that emacs and vi are the only editors
on GNU systems and they are hard. More precisely. the sentiment is:

	"TeX/LaTeX is already quite hard. Why should I make my life
	harder by also using GNU/Linux?"

Better information availability and help (hand-holding) regarding the
support for TeX document creation under FLOSS would definitely have
caused a greater shift toward FLOSS adoption among TeX users in India.
The media-hype that surrounds non-TeX non-FLOSS "solutions" like
MicroSoft's PowerPoint and the like does not help either.

Regards,

Kapil.
-- 
  May I ask a question?
--



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