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Show HN: LaTeX Boilerplates – Plain-Text Document Production System

mrzool.cc

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Re: Show HN: LaTeX Boilerplates – Plain-Text Document Production System

#31

Post by Retra »

ksk wrote: post #16
Retra wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that kind of data would be useful. It's kind of like asking "what do I have to do to make my song a #1 hit?" It depends entirely on what the mood is of the people who happen to be looking at your resume, and the culture that guides the judgements they make about it. I had spent a good deal of effort building a very simple and pleasing resume using LaTeX, and I ended up having a professional career couns…

>It's kind of like asking "what do I have to do to make my song a #1 hit?" Sure, but it's also kind of like asking - Given the fact that all these songs are number one, could we extract some common features? Maybe you'll find out that songs have to be shorter than 3 minutes or nobody plays them on the radio, or that they have to be dynamically compressed within a certain frequency range because most people listen to…

My point is that those features are transient. A #1 song today probably can't be #1 in ten years. If Beethoven were born today, he would not be topping pop charts, even if you have plenty of data showing that his style of music is good. Resume writing either comes down to presenting the fact that you are clearly the most qualified for the position, or because you caught the fad of resume attention-grabbing design in the right way. The later will only really help you if you're competing against many similarly-qualified yet boring candidates. It's better to have more valuable content on your resume than to apply statistics to its paint job.

>Hah, that would exclude a large portion of the professional software industry !

It probably does, but I don't actually want to work for a large portion of the professional software industry. I want to work for people that value me and share my vision. And in turn, I want companies that make those kinds of hiring decisions to not have access to people like me.

Re: Show HN: LaTeX Boilerplates – Plain-Text Document Production System

#32

Post by wyldfire »

charlieegan3 wrote: post #25

Been collecting a few links on this topic: https://www.rpi.edu/dept/arc/training/latex/resumes/ https://github.com/mrzool/cv-boilerplate https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-CV

Thanks for sharing. "Awesome-CV" looks particularly interesting.

Re: Show HN: LaTeX Boilerplates – Plain-Text Document Production System

#33

Post by sokoloff »

nanolith wrote: post #24

I use a similar workflow using Pandoc at work. I painstakingly re-created our corporate Word documentation templates using LaTeX and then set up Pandoc to generate documents from Markdown using these templates. In addition to this, I used Haskell and Diagrams to produce DSLs for rendering various UML documents from text based descriptions. These can be rendered in both vector graphics formats (SVG and Encapsulated Po…

Is your Haskell -> tex -> SVG/EPS open source by any chance?

I'd love to both study the .hs (to further my learning), but I also have a need to make some documents.

Re: Show HN: LaTeX Boilerplates – Plain-Text Document Production System

#34

Post by ksk »

Retra wrote: post #31
ksk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's kind of like asking "what do I have to do to make my song a #1 hit?" Sure, but it's also kind of like asking - Given the fact that all these songs are number one, could we extract some common features? Maybe you'll find out that songs have to be shorter than 3 minutes or nobody plays them on the radio, or that they have to be dynamically compressed within a certain frequency range because most people listen to…

My point is that those features are transient. A #1 song today probably can't be #1 in ten years. If Beethoven were born today, he would not be topping pop charts, even if you have plenty of data showing that his style of music is good. Resume writing either comes down to presenting the fact that you are clearly the most qualified for the position, or because you caught the fad of resume attention-grabbing design in…

Okay, well this seems to be a new point you're making. I think we all realize that you can't have features that are eternal/absolute.

Your example doesn't carry your point. Beethoven, like Mozart actually is popular simply because both are part of mass culture. Classical music however is not part of popular culture and is restricted to certain niches.

Also, there is a legimitate view out there that pop music hasn't changed for the past few decades, and has certain recurring themes - love, loss, sex, etc. But anyway, that is not a very interesting conversation.

I don't agree with your view on resumes. In my opinion, resume writing comes down to knowing the mind of the person who is going to read the resume and convincing them that you're the right candidate. Since mind reading is usually a difficult task, all one can do is increase the probability of success by adopting tips and tricks that others have used.

> It's better to have more valuable content on your resume than to apply statistics to its paint job.

By writing a resume the "common" way, it does not diminish your own value and self-worth. It seems like you want companies to appreciate you only if they hire someone in HR who also appreciates your style of writing resumes. Thats pretty bizzare TBH, but hey whatever works for you.

Re: Show HN: LaTeX Boilerplates – Plain-Text Document Production System

#35

Post by boromi »

It sounds like a good idea, until you need to write advanced mathematical documents, in which case it all breaks down.

Any tips to make a latex pandoc workflow viable for advanced math documents with custom commands and such. I.e. using the mathtools package and various advanced latex math commands?

Re: Show HN: LaTeX Boilerplates – Plain-Text Document Production System

#36

Post by baldfat »

stewbrew wrote: post #23
baldfat wrote: post #12

RStudio (IDE for R) has a great MarkDown to PDF, Word or HTML using Pandoc. http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/pdf_document_format.html Might help you to see their process. You can do the whole thing with CLI but easy in their IDE.

Why would you want to use an IDE (RStudio or whatever) to run pandoc over an markdown file?

You don't have to. That is why I said it can be run in command line, just easy to hit the one button.

They did some good coding for Pandoc is my main point.

Re: Show HN: LaTeX Boilerplates – Plain-Text Document Production System

#37

Post by JohnHammersley »

We've been taking a similar approach at overleaf[1], where our rich text mode let's non-LaTeX users write papers without needing to code.

We've also had success in working with publishers to simplify the submission process for research articles, with direct one-click submission links where we pass the files plus meta data.

See e.g. https://www.overleaf.com/blog/269 for a recent example.

[1] https://www.overleaf.com

Re: Show HN: LaTeX Boilerplates – Plain-Text Document Production System

#38

Post by mrzool »

omaranto wrote: post #30
mrzool wrote: post #20

Thanks for all the feedback! Make sure to check out this article where I talk in depth about a typical workflow and the rationale behind this project: http://mrzool.cc/writing/typesetting-automation/

One thing I didn't really see in that post is why not just LaTeX directly. Is it just that you prefer Markdown syntax? (Which I guess is a valid reason.)

LaTeX is complicated and verbose. Markdown and YAML are terse and readable.

Also, separation of form from content makes life amazingly simple.

Re: Show HN: LaTeX Boilerplates – Plain-Text Document Production System

#39

Post by omaranto »

mrzool wrote: post #38
omaranto wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I didn't really see in that post is why not just LaTeX directly. Is it just that you prefer Markdown syntax? (Which I guess is a valid reason.)

LaTeX is complicated and verbose. Markdown and YAML are terse and readable. Also, separation of form from content makes life amazingly simple.

I agree that separation of form from content makes life amazingly simple, that's one the main virtues of LaTeX. :)

As I said before, preferring Markdown and YAML solely on account of syntax seems fair to me.

Re: Show HN: LaTeX Boilerplates – Plain-Text Document Production System

#40

Post by Retra »

ksk wrote: post #34
Retra wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that those features are transient. A #1 song today probably can't be #1 in ten years. If Beethoven were born today, he would not be topping pop charts, even if you have plenty of data showing that his style of music is good. Resume writing either comes down to presenting the fact that you are clearly the most qualified for the position, or because you caught the fad of resume attention-grabbing design in…

Okay, well this seems to be a new point you're making. I think we all realize that you can't have features that are eternal/absolute. Your example doesn't carry your point. Beethoven, like Mozart actually is popular simply because both are part of mass culture. Classical music however is not part of popular culture and is restricted to certain niches. Also, there is a legimitate view out there that pop music hasn't c…

It's not a new point, it was the first thing I said. Beyond the basics (correctness, accuracy, ease-of-use) what people want in a resume is a fad. What people like in music is just as much a fad.

You can't read a person's mind, but you can change it. That's what your resume is for. You don't have to read any minds, you have to get others to read yours.

>It seems like you want companies to appreciate you only if they hire someone in HR who also appreciates your style of writing resumes.

If a company hires HR people who think "simple and professional" is not good enough for a resume, then they almost certainly won't appreciate me. Simple and professional is what I'm offering. I'm not going to jump through flaming hoops and read resume acceptance statistics to get noticed. I'm going to solve actual problems.

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