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Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

cynicusrex.com

11–20 of 154 posts

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#11
> All this being said, Reddit should copy Hacker News, Twitter should oust Jack Dorsey, Facebook should die, and billionaires should pay their goddamn taxes so we can implement Universal Basic Income. Doing this will enable actual good people to do actual good and useful work without having to rely on ads, difficult to come by donations, blockchain pyramid Ponzi schemes, or bullshit jobs

This was either written by a 20somethings who wasn’t there in the “good times” he is describing, or by someone who was there but still has the mindset of someone in their 20s.

I don’t know which is worse.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#12

I've used LaTeX for the duration of my Bachlor studies. The results are superior to Word, but that's just about where the benefits end. It's a nightmare to use and I don't see how investing time to learn it will benefit me in the long run.

Yeah LaTeX needs some actually useful error messages first before it can be considered for something that people use widely. It's crash logs are even less useful than C++ and that's saying something. You basically have to do guesswork to figure out what might be wrong if the damn thing won't compile.

My BSc thesis wasn't the first thing I wrote in it, but it likely will be the last one. The idea is good, the execution is a resounding meh.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#13

I've used LaTeX for the duration of my Bachlor studies. The results are superior to Word, but that's just about where the benefits end. It's a nightmare to use and I don't see how investing time to learn it will benefit me in the long run.

I have the complete opposite experience. I used word for years and years. I started studying a bit later in life and learned latex first when I was 27. I was flabbergasted that it was not the default tool in the business world. Now I'd rather take an ice bath then write a larger document in word.

I still really disagree with the poster though. Latex is not a good fit for Web pages.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#14
post #11

> All this being said, Reddit should copy Hacker News, Twitter should oust Jack Dorsey, Facebook should die, and billionaires should pay their goddamn taxes so we can implement Universal Basic Income. Doing this will enable actual good people to do actual good and useful work without having to rely on ads, difficult to come by donations, blockchain pyramid Ponzi schemes, or bullshit jobs This was either written by a…

UBI is unequivocally a good thing.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#15
post #11

> All this being said, Reddit should copy Hacker News, Twitter should oust Jack Dorsey, Facebook should die, and billionaires should pay their goddamn taxes so we can implement Universal Basic Income. Doing this will enable actual good people to do actual good and useful work without having to rely on ads, difficult to come by donations, blockchain pyramid Ponzi schemes, or bullshit jobs This was either written by a…

My thoughts exactly. Clickbaity title and clearly no substance. In my experience there is a strong negative correlation between the confidence and young age. A little disappointing this made it to the front page.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#16
I wrote a little R package to write tables. I knew what HTML tables and Word tables could do. I wrote the interface to use all those features. LaTeX nerds were super proud of their tables. Should be easy to reimplement the features in TeX, right?

https://github.com/hughjonesd/huxtable/blob/master/R/latex.R

TeX is an abomination from hell.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#17

I've used LaTeX for the duration of my Bachlor studies. The results are superior to Word, but that's just about where the benefits end. It's a nightmare to use and I don't see how investing time to learn it will benefit me in the long run.

Try the more friendly WYSIWYG TeXmacs. Its output is comparable to TeX/LaTeX.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#18
I've used LaTeX for my bachelor thesis, but i found it such a pain that i wrote an markdown-to-latex converter in PHP, which i found to be less painful.

Today i finished an improved version of that converter in AWK, intending to use it to generate pretty PDFs from markdown, but aside from that, i wish not to interact much with LaTeX itself anymore..

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#19
No, no, no, that's not how Web.0 works! You have to make it worse as the number goes up.

Web 2.0 added more interaction, more tracking, and more advertizing.

Web 3.0 adds crypto scams.

If Web 4.0 is going anywhere near LaTeX, it needs to add not just the typesetting language, but also the whole system of peer-reviewed academic publishing, and you have to publish at least 4 websites a year or perish.

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