案例库 · 研发与科研 · 技术决策 · 1985
这条还没译成中文，下面是英文原文。
LaTeX won scientific writing by letting authors mark meaning, not layout.
Leslie Lamport's 1985 LaTeX put logical markup over Knuth's TeX, so scientists described meaning and got typesetting for free; it became the academic standard.
Leslie Lamport · Donald Knuth
那一手
Donald Knuth's TeX, from 1978, produced superb mathematical typesetting but asked authors to manage low-level spacing and control sequences, too much for most scientists.
In 1985, computer scientist Leslie Lamport built a macro package on TeX that separated content from style: an author marked a document's structure and TeX/LaTeX handled the typography, so complex math and layout came for free.
This logical markup made it the de facto way to write scientific papers for years, and the same source could be re-formatted for a different journal or style, with tens of thousands of style files extending it.
为什么管用
- Structure commands let a non-typesetter produce quality output
- Content and style separation let journals re-style the same source
- It was free, stable and excellent at mathematical notation
- The macro model meant communities could build style files
可以搬走什么
If the tool keeps the formatting decisions, it scales to novices; the product that abstracts complexity away wins the users who otherwise could not do it.
后来呢
LaTeX became the standard for academic papers, preprints and conference proceedings in mathematics and sciences, with most technical publishers set up to accept it. It also seeded the semantic-versus-material writing idea later echoed in web content and documentation systems.
资料来源
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