The question of funding computing tools is an issue : it is true in a private situation when you want to write a manuscript with versioning (you have to know how it works), but it is more relevant within an academic field of research : who wants to buy days of education for scholars for their learning in computing or for XML Oxygen and other tools ?
On 1/6/2022 6:47 PM, Jean-Pierre Delange via ntg-context wrote: there was a time when publishers did typesetting and printing themselves in which case they might have some interest in tools but afaik that time is long gone (and i admit that i never met a publisher where investing in know how and technology was part of the corporate identity (there were some but by the time context showed up most large publishers started outsourcing to far-far-away and those interested in technologies left), at least not one that invest beyond a specific product and even then falling back on tools like tex is a last resort ... do publisheres even have departments that do some kind of resaearch at all? i admire those working at publishers who were willing to take the risk (we dealt with some) but mergers, buyouts by crooky strip-down-and-lay-off investors etc doesn't help dedicated employees long term using tools like tex really depends on individuals who know what they're dealing with and can make convincing use case examples (and then explain thet investing time / money beforehand pays back a lot long term (which is possible in non publishing contexts but publishers go for short term which means pay per page (every time) instead of pay per project (and some maintanance) when i look at some publications i even wonder if the big ones even care about quality at all (folks at the newspaper that we read here figured out that using grayish fonts is best, that hyphenation doesn't need checking, that inter character spacing and extrems expansion looks great, or: soon we migh ditch it because it became hard to read). so ... i suppose authors are pretty much on their own and maybe not even seen as (human) assets any longer by publishers ... but then, i never (will) publish, so who knows ... and from the perspective of context (and development) it is therefore users (who of course can represent an organization) is what we focus on Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------