[texhax] (Delighted to see that some) Microsoft researchers eschew Microsoft Word in favour of PdfTeX for their research papers.

[Reinhard Kotucha]

Hi Phil,
it's known that some developers at Microsoft are well aware of TeX.

I've seen a booklet published by Microsoft advertising the Cambria
Math fonts.  There was a statement on page 2 or 3: "Dedicated to
Donald E. Knuth".  I suppose that it originated from the department
led by Murray Sargent who is working on math typesetting.  I've been
told that they hired Knuth as a consultant.

About a decade ago they added a LaTeX-like frontend to Word which
allows entering math formulas with backslashes and curly braces.

  https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2017/07/30/latex-math-in-office/

But since there is no macro processor, advanced features as provided
by amsmath are not available.  This might explain why researchers
still prefer LaTeX when complex formulas are involved.

Please also note that that some other macro packages were used as
well.  See "Algorithm 1" on page 6.  How much time is needed to do
something like that in Word?  Is it possible at all?

Furthermore I doubt that all the authors involved in this article are
employed by Microsoft.  I could imagine that many of them are working
at universities in China.  Though published by Microsoft, it's just a
research paper.

For more information about Microsoft, come to BachoTeX and ask Adam.
As a consultant he knows Murray Sargent and his department very well.

BTW, I don't regard the document you mentioned as important.  It's a
usual LaTeX document, no more, no less.  It doesn't matter who
published it.

Phil, you've added Thành to the list of recipients because you believe
that it's a great thing that Microsoft is now aware of pdftex.  It's a
matter of fact that Microsoft developers are aware of pdftex from the
beginning.

There are many much more interesting projects based on pdftex.  For
example, many railway companies around the world provide a web
interface which allows users to create customized time tables.  These
time tables are created with pdftex.  The software is provided by

  http://hacon.de/

Regards,
  Reinhard

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhard Kotucha                            Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover                    mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
------------------------------------------------------------------