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[Plug-Ins] [Plug-In Pack]

techexplorer
[Imagemap]

Purpose: Views TeX/LaTeX documents
Company: IBM
Platform: Win95, NT
Plug-in cost: Free
Developer tool: Any word-processing program
Download from: http://www.ics.raleigh.ibm.com/icsbeta/register.htm

In the grand scheme of things, techexplorer serves an extremely narrow audience. If you're neither a scientist nor a career academic, there's nothing here for you.

techexplorer lets your browser process papers written in TeX/LaTeX, an almost archaic markup language used for scholarly publishing (particularly in the sciences). Yes, yes. We know the Web already has its own markup language. But HTML can't accommodat e advanced scientific nomenclature (TEX/LATEX can), and besides - most academics haven't the inclination to learn every newfangled protocol that comes along.

To this obdurate (if not necessarily devoted) audience, IBM offers techexplorer, a Netscape plug-in that allows them to shovel dissertations (and other scholarly sundry) onto the Web without converting TeX/LaTeX to HTML. Intended to supplement rather t han replace HTML, the plug-in's a convenient way to make academic archives available worldwide. But you'll need to jump through a few hoops first; IBM has an extensive licensing agreement that must be submitted via email before downloading the software.



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