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The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

danielallington.net

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Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#71

Post by moomin »

So, to demonstrate how bad LaTeX is, he picks the single most markup heavy thing you do (barring tables) and compares it to plain text? Plain text, I'll point out, that doesn't format the same way. In practice, there _are_ a bunch of extra steps to get this working in Word, they're just not easy to express in a text document.

Then he goes on to show the example of trying to find a spelling error. Ignoring that this just demonstrates his editor support isn't as strong as word's. And completely elides the cascading nightmare that is what happens when Word formatting goes wrong.

Someone else has already pointed out how much superior a text based format is if you want to work with multiple people or track the history of a document.

WYSIWYG editing has, to my mind, one advantage only: it's easier to get started. LaTeX has its disadvantages (such as being a macro language) but being a markup language isn't one of them.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#72

Post by bdamm »

jeanchen wrote: post #58
taeric wrote: post #12

I had a few things about TeX versus LaTeX. I think the reality is nobody really tries writing TeX. But, ultimately my beef is the straw man that markup is bad because it is harder to read. That a graphical editor is superior because it is more readable. Instead, the advantage is that in the one you are only writing text and you are indicating special instructions to the computer. In the other, you only see what the c…

Yup, many times I have needed to blast misbehaving text with "Clear Formatting" or delete it entirely and recreate it.

Paste into text-only is a sad and modern requirement.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#73

Post by b0rsuk »

b0rsuk wrote: post #66

I feel offended by the omission of my personal favorite, reStructuredText (reST). It's a very robust and readable markup language, and can easily generate documents in HTML, Linux man, latex, pdf, odt and more. If readability of LaTeX bothers you so much, use reST. Best of both worlds, really. I only roll up my sleeves with LaTeX when I need precise control over appearance, like writing a CV or a board game manual.

Some good points for reST instead of markdown:

  * Markdown has many flavors, reST is standarized
  * reST is extensible
  * reST is semantic, Markdown is just text.
http://ericholscher.com/blog/2016/mar/15/dont-use-markdown-f...

reST is marginally harder than markdowns, so is it really worth sticking with MD ?

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#75

Post by hvidgaard »

fny wrote: post #29

I have only three gripes about LaTex and friends. First, LaTeX was intended for physical publication, so there's no native notion of text reflow or "responsiveness". Worse, everyone distributes their documents as PDFs, which are a PITA to read on a smaller device or ereader. At best, an author could utilize something like pandoc to distribute an HTML version, but alas, publishers never give a damn. Second, I have bee…

It's been quite a while since I wrote any LaTeX, but you could compile a LaTeX document into ePub if you wanted to. In essence, LaTeX is the source code for the document, and the output is whatever target it is compiled to. So, if it is compiled to pdf, that is what you get, but nothing fundamental prevents it from compiling to other formats, given that someone writes the compiler.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#76

Post by Mathnerd314 »

hvidgaard wrote: post #75
fny wrote: post #29

I have only three gripes about LaTex and friends. First, LaTeX was intended for physical publication, so there's no native notion of text reflow or "responsiveness". Worse, everyone distributes their documents as PDFs, which are a PITA to read on a smaller device or ereader. At best, an author could utilize something like pandoc to distribute an HTML version, but alas, publishers never give a damn. Second, I have bee…

It's been quite a while since I wrote any LaTeX, but you could compile a LaTeX document into ePub if you wanted to. In essence, LaTeX is the source code for the document, and the output is whatever target it is compiled to. So, if it is compiled to pdf, that is what you get, but nothing fundamental prevents it from compiling to other formats, given that someone writes the compiler.

I've just been writing HTML/ePubs directly, with http://www.bluegriffon.org/. What do you use instead of LaTeX?

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#77

Post by eesmith »

Derbasti wrote: post #62
taeric wrote: post #12

I had a few things about TeX versus LaTeX. I think the reality is nobody really tries writing TeX. But, ultimately my beef is the straw man that markup is bad because it is harder to read. That a graphical editor is superior because it is more readable. Instead, the advantage is that in the one you are only writing text and you are indicating special instructions to the computer. In the other, you only see what the c…

Also, he implies that LaTeX documents are always typeset in Computer Modern and the plain article template (which is ugly!). XeTeX can use all the same TTF/OTF fonts Word uses. Oh, and let's not forget that Word's math renderer is gross.

He does not imply they are "always typeset in Computer Modern".

The relevant quote is "everything is (typically) printed in this weird, old-fashioned-looking typeface called Computer Modern." The "(typically)" implies that there are cases where the result is not in Computer Modern.

On the same topic, "if you want to do anything really wild and crazy – like using a typeface other than Computer Modern – then plain vanilla TeX and LaTeX won’t do. ... And anything other than vanilla TeX and LaTeX is really, really difficult to install. So difficult that most people seem to give up on installing individual packages and instead install the whole of something called TeX Live."

Again, that implies that not all LaTex documents are in Computer Modern.

He mentions XeTeX in the following: "I only needed XeTeX and XeLaTeX, which are quite small. So I tried to install just those. While I did eventually manage it, it took a long time and was very frustrating – and what was most frustrating was that when I looked for help online, the advice I found basically amounted to ‘install TeX Live; everybody else does’.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#78

Post by [deleted] »

moomin wrote: post #71

So, to demonstrate how bad LaTeX is, he picks the single most markup heavy thing you do (barring tables) and compares it to plain text? Plain text, I'll point out, that doesn't format the same way. In practice, there _are_ a bunch of extra steps to get this working in Word, they're just not easy to express in a text document. Then he goes on to show the example of trying to find a spelling error. Ignoring that this j…

[deleted]

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#79

Post by patkai »

JelteF wrote: post #68

I've switched from writing latex to writing pandoc markdown. I then convert it to latex and then to pdf. This gets the same result as latex, but is much easier to type for common stuff like, sections, emphasis and verbatim. It also allows you to type "&" symbols anywhere. When I require "advanced" stuff like tables and figures you can easily fallback to inline latex commands within you're markdown. It really is a sig…

I've been looking for something like Pandoc for a while, great tip!

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#80

Post by lucb1e »

JelteF wrote: post #68

I've switched from writing latex to writing pandoc markdown. I then convert it to latex and then to pdf. This gets the same result as latex, but is much easier to type for common stuff like, sections, emphasis and verbatim. It also allows you to type "&" symbols anywhere. When I require "advanced" stuff like tables and figures you can easily fallback to inline latex commands within you're markdown. It really is a sig…

> you can easily fallback to inline latex commands within [your] markdown

How? This sounds like a very nice middle ground between easy formatting and advanced features.

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