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The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

danielallington.net

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Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#101

Post by ygra »

Derbasti wrote: post #61
ucaetano wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that Google Docs actually handles all of those.

How would Google Docs update a graph in a document from an external graphics file? All my graphs and tables are generated in some programming environment, and updated frequently. In Word, I would have to right-click every single graph, select new source file, adapt graph size... Could Google Docs do this?

Make it a link to the file in Word instead of embedding it. Then it auto-updates in the document as well.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#102

Post by rubenbe »

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 use a pandoc to generate HTML presentations in a similar way. Throw the whole thing in git and you versioned all your presentations.

In theory I could also generate the same presentations in PDF, but I sprinkled some inline HTML where needed, which would have to be converted to inline latex.

Pandoc also has a plugin system which I use to automatically convert inline graphiz graphs to png.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#103

Post by dmitriid »

LaTeX is only good for one thing, and one thing only: create same-looking two-column PDFs for research/scholarly publications. And it's barely good at that.

Things may have changed slightly since I last used it (cca 2008), but: combining several languages in one document (Turkish + Russian, anyone?), tables that properly span several pages, inline images, a different layout (that doesn't break languages, or tables, or images, or even works, or doesn't look like shit)? All that is nigh impossible unless you're willing to spend countless hours digging through obscure error messages and arcane setup rules.

I managed to produce this in the end: https://www.scribd.com/doc/31019289/Система-полуавтоматическ...

My verdict: LaTeX? Never again.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#104

Post by ygra »

photojosh wrote: post #28
bane wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use the style system built into the word processor. Then when you change the style, it changes all other instances of it. You can also trivially add new styles as you need. In Microsoft Word for Windows it's the "Styles" bar, and on MacOS it's the "Styles Pane".

It requires huge discipline to use styles properly all the time, because the options to just tweak your formatting "a little" are made more prominent in every WYSIWYG word processor I've used. And if you have to collaborate on a document with others, no chance at all. It would be interesting to see a word processor that enforced style usage...

Actually, ever since introduction of the Ribbon in Office 2007 I found the styles to be much more prominent than the presentational formatting. Not that it stops anyone who doesn't want to learn how to use Word properly to still use the latter, but simply by size and visual importance in the UI styles are far more into your face than the other formatting options.

And sure, it takes some discipline to use styles, but that goes for any other option as well (apart from things like Docbook maybe). You're supposed to use \em in LaTeX instead of \textit for the same reasons you're supposed to use an Emphasis style in Word instead of italic text. The only difference is that the mechanism is the same in LaTeX (type a few characters – which is pretty much why for any given macro you'd be hard-pressed to actually decide whether it's semantic or presentational), while in Word it's a separate feature.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#105

Post by ygra »

grecy wrote: post #52
throwaway2016a wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number of times I have changed stuff like gutters, margins, chapter headings, caption fonts and layouts would make that an absolute nightmare. The big publishers don't give you control over that. They give you a template and you have to stick to it. As an author your first and only job is to provide the content (typically). Not everyone knows this but MS Word lets you create formatting blocks that essential beh…

I am self-publishing. > Not everyone knows this but MS Word lets you create formatting blocks that essential behave like CSS classes. Most people have used MS Word Heading, Sub Heading, etc not realizing that as long as you never touch the font formatting options the classes can be changed globally just by applying a different template. Absolutely, but it's going to be a nightmare when all of my 40 chapters are in a…

Well, you would have one document tying them all together.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#106

Post by ygra »

dragonwriter wrote: post #33
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…

> Worse, everyone distributes their documents as PDFs, which are a PITA to read on smaller devices For anything other than simple linear text, I've found PDFs easier to work with than alternatives, even using letter/A4 PDFs on a smartphone.

I've found two-column papers quite awful to read on screen without the ability to reflow. Once per page you have to scroll up again to the start of the page before continuing to the next page. It's easier with a large display where you can just fit the whole page, but on a small laptop screen it wasn't a pleasant experience.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#107

Post by sideshowb »

I don't use LaTeX any more.

I used it for my undergrad dissertation. It was great.

I used it for my PhD thesis. It was great.

In between the two, I used it for a research paper. I ended up bringing a couple of extra coauthors onto the paper. They weren't familiar with LaTeX. Guess who ended up doing their editing for them?

I stick to Word these days for anything there's a chance I will have to collaborate on with others. Awkwardness working with people who can't use LaTeX is a risk I'm not going to take. Plus, Word (and associated referencing tools like Zotero) have come on a lot since I first used LaTeX 16 years ago.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#108

Post by jcelerier »

dmitriid wrote: post #103

LaTeX is only good for one thing, and one thing only: create same-looking two-column PDFs for research/scholarly publications. And it's barely good at that. Things may have changed slightly since I last used it (cca 2008), but: combining several languages in one document (Turkish + Russian, anyone?), tables that properly span several pages, inline images, a different layout (that doesn't break languages, or tables, o…

> combining several languages in one document (Turkish + Russian

what's the problem with this ? just encode as UTF-8 and type however you like.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#109

Post by TrickyRick »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #89
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…

> work with multiple people or track the history of a document I often proofread for my friends. I tell them that they must use Track Changes in Word. Is there a better tool that you recommend?

Sharelatex if you want something that's easy to get started with for non-programmers (As opposed to Git)

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#110

Post by TrickyRick »

pantalaimon wrote: post #86
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…

I must admit that getting text to flow around images has always lead to cascading nightmares for me in LaTeX too.

Doing anything with images is a cascading nightmare. Thankfully the ratio of images to text in the articles I've written in Latex has heavily favored text and after a while you gather a collection of snippets for displaying images in a few common ways.
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