Re: The joy of plain text

From: Gerry Myerson (gerry_at_maths.mq.edi.ai.i2u4email)
Date: 12/03/04 

Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 15:13:03 +1100

In article <20041201231249.T40386@agora.rdrop.com>,
 William Elliot <marsh@privacy.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 2 Dec 2004, Gerry Myerson wrote:
> >
> > Occasionally I post something here that I've cut 'n' pasted from
> > another source, where it was in TeX. Going through the TeX, especially
> > if it's at all long, and manually editing it into a form you'd approve
> > is not an option; your options are, I post the TeX, or I don't post
> > at all.
> >
> Then don't post it. Unless it's simple Tex, likely I may never read it.
> Of the many many problems in the 7 groups I read, I've little time to
> translate hard to read stuff. So if you've not time to make your post
> readable, why should I take the time to make it readable and then even
> more time to solve the problem and yet more time to present an answer?
> You are asking too much of free tutoring. Those who post readable
> problems are those I read and (when able) answer first.

I see that I didn't make myself clear. Most of what I post here
is not problems but answers to other people's problems. I've been
providing, not asking for, the free tutoring for over a decade
now (for the most part), though I guess it's too much to expect
that even regulars contributors such as yourself would have noticed.
The typical situation in which I'll post in TeX is when someone
asks a research-level question, and I happen to know that there's
a paper on the topic already in the literature, and I'll go cut
'n' paste the review from Math Reviews, which review will be written
in TeX. If the person who asked the question can't decode the TeX,
too bad - how much can she ask of free tutoring?

You are hereby excused from reading anything I post in TeX.
I think I'll survive. 

-- 
Gerry Myerson (gerry@maths.mq.edi.ai) (i -> u for email)

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