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I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX

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Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX

#3

Post by mhh__ »

LaTeX needs replacing with something faster and more program-y, and that isn't just a python script.

LateX's successor should be opinionated, safe, easy to build in parallel, and also good at integrating with other tooling:

Let a CAS generate the next equation for you, for example.

Make sure that figure is never out of date (e.g. a build system rather than relying on a web of files and button clicks)

Etc.

This will likely never happen because latex is still very good at what people want it to do push comes to shove, but we could have a much better document format and publishing system around it.

Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX

#4

Post by clircle »

mhh__ wrote: post #3

LaTeX needs replacing with something faster and more program-y, and that isn't just a python script. LateX's successor should be opinionated, safe, easy to build in parallel, and also good at integrating with other tooling: Let a CAS generate the next equation for you, for example. Make sure that figure is never out of date (e.g. a build system rather than relying on a web of files and button clicks) Etc. This will l…

What is LuaLaTeX?

Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX

#5

Post by patrickg »

I have a related feeling about TeX. It has superb output quality but the programming is awful. When LuaTeX finally arrived a few years ago, it was possible to do almost everything you have done before in the TeX language (starting with \backslashes) in Lua.

See http://wiki.luatex.org/index.php/TeX_without_TeX for an introduction.

I have (shameless plug) created a database publishing software using this technique (https://github.com/speedata/publisher/). Once in a while I have to use LaTeX and it feels a bit old school to do the macro programming.

My next project is to rewrite the TeX algorithms in Go - see https://github.com/speedata/boxesandglue. Already usable but not TeX like in any way (this is just a library, not a frontend software like TeX)

Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX

#6

Post by Pinus »

You sometimes see people ask fairly simple Python questions on Stack Overflow, that could be solved by five lines of plain Python, and be answered with some Pandas magic incantation that happens to do what they want with one call. I always find this a bit sad, because it seems to take away the idea that programming is about assembling composable parts, replacing it by a search for the right magic thing from a box of ready-made magic things.

(Plain)TeX always seems the opposite of this. There is never a keyword that does what you want, but you can always do it by using five different mechanisms in concert. You always feel like you are trying to trick the system into doing something it was not designed for.

Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX

#7

Post by gus_massa »

I'm not sure if it's necessary to use auxiliary files.

I made something implementing fake vectors using \csname . I think that a similar approach can be used for this problem, but I prefer to never see my old code again. IWIMM

  \newcommand{\defwithindex}[3]{%
    \expandafter\def\csname #1@#2\endcsname{#3}%
  }

  \newcommand{\getwithindex}[2]{%
    \csname #1@#2\endcsname%
  }
(You probably need the two dimensional version.)

Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX

#8

Post by mhh__ »

clircle wrote: post #4
mhh__ wrote: post #3

LaTeX needs replacing with something faster and more program-y, and that isn't just a python script. LateX's successor should be opinionated, safe, easy to build in parallel, and also good at integrating with other tooling: Let a CAS generate the next equation for you, for example. Make sure that figure is never out of date (e.g. a build system rather than relying on a web of files and button clicks) Etc. This will l…

What is LuaLaTeX?

Good idea. Doesn't go far enough / is only an incremental improvement.

I've never truly immersed myself in it so maybe it's more powerfully elegant than I remember.

Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX

#9

Post by jonpalmisc »

I also have a love & hate relationship with LaTeX. I think it really boils down to the following:

LaTeX will work excellently for you, so long as your use case was envisioned by the original authors.

I can't say that the original authors of LaTeX didn't envision using it for creating slideshows/presentations, but I can say that making a beamer theme is uniquely complicated. I wish that LaTeX had something as flexible as CSS for styling documents rather than the awkward commands, etc. used now—so much so that I attempted to replace LaTeX with a HTML & CSS -> PDF workflow in the past [0]. It is still an idea I want to revisit someday when I have more time.

[0] https://github.com/jonpalmisc/pmt (no longer actively maintained)

Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX

#10

Post by dontbenebby »

LaTeX is mostly good for academics who need to manage citations, if you just want a clean, readable CV there's lots of WYSIWYG options.

I actually used to use TexMaxer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texmaker

It's on my list of things I want to deploy a fuzzer on when I get around to learning that -- I've been focused more on data visualization lately.

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