What is the intended use for LaTex these days?
I’m not trying to flame, I just have no idea why anyone would choose to use it over html/css or just a word processor.
I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX
11–20 of 245 posts
Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX
#12You 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…
> You always feel like you are trying to trick the system into doing something it was not designed for.
This is one of the hallmarks of human civilization.
Your hands were designed for throwing a stone at the eye of a mammoth. But you can play the violin with them! Yes; it is totally awkward and anti-natural for your hands, obviously not their intended purpose... but so beautiful!
Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX
#13I'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.)
Hi! Author here. This is a cool idea for a vector implementation, but you still need to work around the fact that the command definition can come after the \get
Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX
#14What is the intended use for LaTex these days? I’m not trying to flame, I just have no idea why anyone would choose to use it over html/css or just a word processor.
Academia. At least, its widespread (almost universal) where I am studying. Mainly to manage citations, figures, and tables of contents automatically. Tools like Sharelatex are used for collaboration on papers.
Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX
#15What is the intended use for LaTex these days? I’m not trying to flame, I just have no idea why anyone would choose to use it over html/css or just a word processor.
Academia. At least, its widespread (almost universal) where I am studying. Mainly to manage citations, figures, and tables of contents automatically. Tools like Sharelatex are used for collaboration on papers.
That’s interesting.
Is it really a problem that requires manually writing the code? Seems like there should be more elegant solutions by this point.
Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX
#16LaTeX 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…
> something faster
I don't know that this is the major pain point. The thing is, writing complex-structure/programmed documents is not something which needs immediate re-rendering with every character - just like you don't recompile your program with every character you change.
This would, however, be very useful for syntax and compiler-detectable error. You would have an effectively-immediate indication of warnings and errors per line in your document, like an IDE. So it would be Java-like compilation speed rather than C++-like compilation speed...
> safe
LaTeX programming is basically sandboxed, or at least you have to work _very_ hard to do dangerous things.
> latex is still very good at what people want it to do
That's not it. It is actually usually pretty bad in doing what we want it to do (e.g. tables. Oh, the pain!) ... but what it has going for it is that you can do almost anything you want?: It will take effort and the "source code" will be ugly, but it'll work.
Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX
#17What is the intended use for LaTex these days? I’m not trying to flame, I just have no idea why anyone would choose to use it over html/css or just a word processor.
Gold standard equation editing.
Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX
#18What is the intended use for LaTex these days? I’m not trying to flame, I just have no idea why anyone would choose to use it over html/css or just a word processor.
My use case was for getting easy marks for proper APA formatting, which Zotero/EndNote and Mendeley don’t quite cover in one pass.
Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Academia. At least, its widespread (almost universal) where I am studying. Mainly to manage citations, figures, and tables of contents automatically. Tools like Sharelatex are used for collaboration on papers.
That’s interesting. Is it really a problem that requires manually writing the code? Seems like there should be more elegant solutions by this point.
For most usages, you don't need to write the code. Sometimes buff out rough edges for your specific application, but in my 12 years in academia, I think I've only really _written_ Latex twice.
Re: I hate LaTeX, I love LaTeX
#20What is the intended use for LaTex these days? I’m not trying to flame, I just have no idea why anyone would choose to use it over html/css or just a word processor.
Anything where decent typography is desired. Also, of course, mathematics. Mathjax is very good, but we sometimes want a canonical version of a document that looks the same for every reader, and doesn’t depend of the vagaries of constantly evolving browser engines. This means PDF.