The joy of plain text

From: The World Wide Wade (waderameyxiii_at_comcast.remove13.net)
Date: 12/02/04 

Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 18:02:02 -0800

In article <301120040755374483%edgar@math.ohio-state.edu.invalid>,
 "G. A. Edgar" <edgar@math.ohio-state.edu.invalid> wrote:

> > Please, no TEX when you post here; this is a plain text newsgroup.
>
> On the contrary, this is a mathematics newsgroup, where TeX is quite
> common.

On the contrary? Your statement does not contradict anything I wrote. And
I'm not sure what "common" is supposed to imply: Poorly stated questions
are much more common on sci.math than is TeX; that is hardly an argument
for them.

I was under the impression that sci.math is a plain text ng. Isn't this
forum for the worldwide mathematics community at large? This would include
many who are unfamiliar with TeX: kids, high-school teachers, all sorts of
amateurs and hobbyists, engineers, math Ph.D.s who got their degrees
decades ago and are in other fields now, etc. I once knew TeX well enough
to write a few papers in it, but I left academia years ago and today I much
prefer plain old text to TeX on sci.math.

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