Subject: Re: Notes to Letter Writers From: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) Date: 1991-02-21, 01:30 Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks In article <1991Feb21.175207.4886@engin.umich.edu> ewm@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ernst W Mayer) writes: > >In article <84836213@bfmny0.BFM.COM>, tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes: > >|> * DON'T do some kind of form letter!! Whoever uploaded his letter (in > >|> TeX, yet -- why not a bitmap?? :-( ) with the recommendation to "copy > >|> the text in the middle into your own letter" or words to that effect, > >|> was doing a disservice. USE YOUR OWN WORDS ... > > > >If I recall correctly (of course I do, I saved the bloody posting in a file,) > >what I wrote was: > > ``...those of you who > > have it on your system but haven't used it to write a letter can simply > > copy the stuff between the ------ lines into a file called, say, letter.tex, > > INSERT YOUR OWN ADDRESS AND TEXT, ...'' > >I wanted to make it easy for people to use LaTeX to write a letter, > >not to tell them what to write. Next time read the postings more carefully > >before casting stones, please. My apologies for misinterpreting Ernst Mayer's professed intent in posting his entire ABC letter in LaTeX format. I didn't read his introductory paragraph closely enough. I rather suspect, however, that most readers would treat it as I did, namely an invitation to copy the whole thing. If a user doesn't understand LaTeX, he or she will probably have little success in negotiating all the little backslash sequences necessary to substitute his or her own name, address, signature etc., as well as express the letter body properly. ({\sl Twin Peaks}, indeed!) On the other hand, if the user DOES know LaTeX he or she can probably see that all that extensive control information is accomplishing about what a 5 minute session with the ol' Underwood portable will do: tab over here, put your address, skip a line, type your message, etc. There's nothing fancy going on. Using LaTeX for something like this is total overkill. Anyway, enough criticism. My real point is that people should AVOID any semblance of uniformity in content or format of their letters. Write your own, from scratch, using whatever you have at hand, and mail it NOW. That's what counts. -- What luck for rulers that men []+ Tom Neff do not think. -- A. Hitler +[] tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM