Why is TeX still used? What are some good, modern alternatives? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is TeX still used? What are some good, modern alternatives?

#121

Post by actf » Tue, Mar 15, 2011, 11:52 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #4

The reason TeX is still used is because it is open source and beautiful, because it is the best at handling mathematical notation, and because of its inertial dominance in math and the hard sciences in Academia. The reason TeX has so, so many fixable problems after 30 years is because there is no financial incentive for anyone to fix it. The answer is not to find a TeX alternative. This will not be possible in Academ…

it is the best at handling mathematical notation

Honest question: What makes you say that? I've never completely understood why TeX is considered the best at handling mathematical notation. Personally, I've been very happy with the equation editor in Word 2010. I'll certainly acknowledge that there's likely better solutions than Word 2010, but before I invest substantial time learning something like TeX I'd like to understand exactly what it is I'm missing out on.

Re: Why is TeX still used? What are some good, modern alternatives?

#122

Post by blahblahblah » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 12:18 AM UTC

yason wrote: post #104

I argue that TeX isn't widely used in nearly all of academia. Microsoft Word is awkwardly common, for what I've seen. The likelihood of TeX use grows with the probability of having to include complex equations into papers. This will emphasize—with perhaps the notable exception of CS—the sciences without the word 'science' in them. Generally, it's easier to write logically structured text rather than physically struct…

I'd suspect that TeX is mostly used in academic departments where UNIX has been the de facto operating environment for a long time (e.g. engineering, computer science, mathematics, physics) and there is a well-established "command line" culture. In more Windows-centric departments, MS Word is ubiquitous. If the Equation Editor functionality in Word isn't sufficient to do what you need, then MathType (the professional version, sold separately) is generally adequate to get the job done. If you need more control than what MS Word can offer, then you generally go with InDesign instead.

Re: Why is TeX still used? What are some good, modern alternatives?

#123

Post by kamechan » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 9:53 AM UTC

towndrunk wrote: post #47

kamechan wrote: post #18

why is it still used? WYSIWYW >> WYSIWYG modern alternatives? nothing i can think of.

Adobe's FrameMaker?

why pay for it when i can get it for free? LyX FTW!

TBH, i've never used framemaker and their site makes me want to give it a try. TODO: give it a try.

Re: Why is TeX still used? What are some good, modern alternatives?

#124

Post by zoul » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 12:18 PM UTC

adamc wrote: post #71

Off-topic, but the closing of interesting open-ended discussion points is one of the reasons I avoid stack overflow.

Stack Overflow actively tries to avoid open-ended discussions because it’s not a discussion site. I see that as a feature.

Re: Why is TeX still used? What are some good, modern alternatives?

#125

Post by NY_USA_Hacker » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 9:12 PM UTC

juiceandjuice wrote: post #97

NY_USA_Hacker wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part Two III. What TeX is Good for. No single piece of software is everything, and neither is TeX. It is possible to look at TeX and wish for more. So, just what is TeX and what is it good for? The history is clear: For Knuth's series of books, 'The Art of Computer Programming', the publisher Addison-Wesley told Knuth that for his next edition they were going to use an approach to typesetting that would reduce the 't…

Actually, I'd argue that HTML had a very similar goal to TeX with a very different philosophy. That goal was purely the sharing of information. Some early browsers even had postscript interpreters so you could link to papers and view them in the browser. The first website at SLAC (first site in the US) was purely meant to be a gateway to the SPIRES database. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Physics_Information_R…

I've suspected that Tim Berners-Lee knew TeX before he did HTML. That he was a physicist in computing at CERN means that he had to have seen TeX.

I'd say that the main difference is that TeX was looking backwards and HTML, forwards. Again, TeX was trying to computerize old, stable, slow, expensive, high quality manual typesetting for math, and HTML, at least now, is on the way to being the main way people view nearly all information and interact with computers. The emphasis on the 'typographic quality' of the results is very different: TeX goes for the highest quality, and HTML is to be quick and dirty.

Yes, both had smaller beginnings: For TeX, Knuth wanted to write his books. For HTML, Berners-Lee wanted a physics newsletter.

At this point there is a huge difference: TeX is solidly frozen, and HTML continues with changes as fast as Jeff Jaffe and the rest of computing can implement,

In the future, sure, HTML could replace TeX. For the very high quality paragraph setting, there's no fundamental reason HTML could not specify and implement that. For the math, similarly. There does need to be an 'executing language' (TeX is a programming language, maybe Turing machine equivalent, and not just static text), but JavaScript might suffice.

A big advantage would be that HTML now knows about all the characters in all the languages.

But such high interest in math is likely in conflict with reality!

Re: Why is TeX still used? What are some good, modern alternatives?

#126

Post by ek » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 9:57 PM UTC

actf wrote: post #121

jessriedel wrote: post #4

The reason TeX is still used is because it is open source and beautiful, because it is the best at handling mathematical notation, and because of its inertial dominance in math and the hard sciences in Academia. The reason TeX has so, so many fixable problems after 30 years is because there is no financial incentive for anyone to fix it. The answer is not to find a TeX alternative. This will not be possible in Academ…

it is the best at handling mathematical notation Honest question: What makes you say that? I've never completely understood why TeX is considered the best at handling mathematical notation. Personally, I've been very happy with the equation editor in Word 2010. I'll certainly acknowledge that there's likely better solutions than Word 2010, but before I invest substantial time learning something like TeX I'd like to u…

Do you typeset any serious mathematical work in Word 2010?

When people talk about TeX's mathematical typesetting abilities, they are often (from personal experience, as a math major currently in school) referring to having to typeset documents with many pages and upwards of 25% being math. It's much easier for me to type \int_0^\pi \sin (x) dx than it is for me to go click-click-click-click in Word. But besides that, when you're writing proofs, for example, and you have to keep referring to the same symbol, say sigma, over and over again, in LaTeX, you would simply write $\sigma$, but in Word, you would have to do Insert->Symbol or some nonsense. Several more seconds wasted, and that adds up when you have 100 occurrences of the character sigma in your document.

TeX has a learning curve, but it's not even actually that steep. Within 4 days of starting to use it I was already starting to grok it.

Re: Why is TeX still used? What are some good, modern alternatives?

#127

Post by rubergly » Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 2:56 PM UTC

daniel-cussen wrote: post #117

jessriedel wrote: post #4

The reason TeX is still used is because it is open source and beautiful, because it is the best at handling mathematical notation, and because of its inertial dominance in math and the hard sciences in Academia. The reason TeX has so, so many fixable problems after 30 years is because there is no financial incentive for anyone to fix it. The answer is not to find a TeX alternative. This will not be possible in Academ…

I use scribtex.com. It handles all the packages and compilation process. I can't say, really, about the debugging, and I haven't used different image types, but moving Tex on Latex online fixed a lot of problems for me.

this site looks really cool; I've been wondering for a while if a site like this existed, and this one seems really fleshed out.