Which font is this? Is there an equivalnet for use in plain TeX?

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2020-12-29 at 20:34:12 +0100, Heiko Oberdiek via texhax wrote:

 > Yes, more than plain TeX is needed for a comfortable font handling.
 > (Of course, this is fun for a programmer loving programming in plain
 > TeX, but not for an unexperienced end user that just needs to write
 > a document, possibly with a deadline.)

Hello everybody,
I fear that we end up in the useless never ending discussion about
plain TeX vs. LaTeX.

 * TeX is an extensible typesetting engine which provides the required
   primitives and the plain format provides macros which make
   typesetting easier.  It's still a programming language.  In order
   to use it conveniently programming skills are required.

 * LaTeX is supposed to be a markup language, similar to HTML.  This a
   completely different thing.

They are as different as fire and ice and thus it's imposssible do
claim that one is better than the other.

Whether I use LaTeX or plain TeX depends on what I want to achieve.
Just look at

  http://metar.ddns.net

I can create a weather report (a PDF file) within 70 ms.  Compiling
the LaTeX file

  \documentclass{minimal}
  \stop

takes 300 ms though LuaLaTeX says "no pages of output."  So 300 ms for
nothing.

As far as font loading is concerned, LaTeX is more convenient because
it provides sophisticated facilities by default.

But there are many use cases where LaTeX is not the best choice,
especially if PDF files are supposed to be created on-the-fly.

My experience is that I formerly overestimated what LaTeX provides.  A
typical LaTeX package offers a lot of things.  When I only need one of
these features it's easy enough to implement it in plain TeX.

Whenever people compare plain TeX with LaTeX I have a relation in mind
where the values at both sides of the greater sign (\gt in TeX) have
different units.

Phil prefers plain TeX, Heiko prefers LaTeX, but it's not always a
matter of taste.  Both have their pros and cons.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                            Phone: +49-511-3373112
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