The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad • Hacker News Board

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#241

Post by kleiba » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 11:49 PM UTC

jawaddeo wrote: post #122

kleiba wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the argument is that it's apple's "fault" because the restrictions of the platform require the whole package to be bundled as a single binary, instead of allowing a more modular distribution mechanism. Most of the contents in the 4G are extension packages. But I am not sure if "fault" is an appropriate term here anyway, we're simply observing two different approaches to software bundling that happen to be inc…

The restrictions are what they are, but TeX doesn't help at all by being large with an internal (circular!) dependency tree that would (should) get you fired in a flash from a commercial software house.

Apart from the fact that trees cannot be circular ;-) LaTeX installations work like a charm for other forms of distributions. I think it's really just a clash of philosophies here.

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#242

Post by omaranto » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 12:44 AM UTC

stan_rogers wrote: post #214

omaranto wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palatino for text is fine, but what math fonts go well with it? I think them main reason I use Computer Modern is that the math and text fonts look so good together.

How about mathpazo? That's the \usepackage{} I use to get Palatino in the first place, and it includes Palatino-styled math elements.

Oh! Wow! I just tried on some of my notes, it's definitely pretty. I didn't know there was a good companion math font, thanks for enlightening me.

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#243

Post by patrickg » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 10:15 AM UTC

antihero wrote: post #234

patrickg wrote: post #21

* First of all, the OP mixes up LaTeX and TeX. TeX is written in a very portable language and has been ported to more platforms than most other software, including PDP-10 and others. * LaTeX is working on the iPad, see for example: http://meeting.contextgarden.net/2010/talks/2010-09-14-arthu... * LuaTeX ( http://luatex.org ) is written in C, not WEB. * You only need one binary to work with TeX. Either PDFTeX or LuaTe…

I may be being dumb, but is there a good tutorial for LuaTeX?

No, there isn't. I am working on a book, but it will take a while when this is translated to english.

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#244

Post by dlitz » Fri, Nov 25, 2011, 6:48 AM UTC

dextorious wrote: post #105

atakan_gurkan wrote: post #10

The price of a LaTeX rewrite would be even higher: incompatibility. If one tries to rewrite TeX, the problem gets much much worse, since TeX is, for all intents and purposes, bug-free. A new implementation will certainly not be. Joel Spolsky said it very well http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html I disagree that the current situation is LaTeX developers' fault. TeX and LaTeX are complex pieces of…

"""The price of a LaTeX rewrite would be even higher: incompatibility.""" Yeah. The only benefit is a codebase that reflects current needs and can grow in new directions and follow current practices, that programmers of today are familiar with. And also be faster, and more flexible. But what are those compared to compatibility right? (Of course people interested in pure compatibility could just continue to use the ol…

Don't you think intelligent people have better things to do than to rewrite old code, just because Apple's platform lacks important features that have been well-known for several decades?

The notion that every time we have a new language/platform, we must REWRITE THE WORLD!! is absurd and a huge waste of resources. We should stop making excuses for it.

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#245

Post by microtherion » Fri, Nov 25, 2011, 4:14 PM UTC

dextorious wrote: post #167

quanticle wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your wrong assumption is a) that a problem has to be bug free to be useful or b) that a new effort can't produce a relatively bug free codebase? How are either of those requirements wrong? I certainly expect my programs to be bug free. LaTeX is a tool that's older than many GNU utilities. It's been reviewed and tested numerous times over by the harshest test suite of all: the real world. Yes, in theory , you coul…

"""How are either of those requirements wrong? I certainly expect my programs to be bug free.""" Good luck with that. What I said, though, was that "a problem has to be bug free to be useful" is a wrong assumption. We all use programs that have bugs, and still found them immensely useful. """Yes, in theory, you could rewrite TeX to be cleaner, while maintaining backwards compatibility and lack of bugs and regressions…

Both LuaTeX and XeTeX have the original TeX code at their core, so they are not bottom-up rewrites.

The purpose and benefit of backward compatibility for TeX is that a 30 year old manuscript written in TeX can be fed to the latest version and produce identical output to what was produced 30 years ago. (Of course, you'd also have to archive the macro packages and font files you were using, but those were never machine dependent).

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#246

Post by rmc » Sat, Nov 26, 2011, 5:45 PM UTC

HnNoPassMailer wrote: post #237

william42 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain to me how to type the fraction (a^2+b^2-c^2)/(2ab), which is the simple $\frac{a^2+b^2-c^2}{2ab}$ in TeX, so that the numerator appears above the denominator in HTML. Or any non-TeX layout.

A div/span with vertical aligment containing 2 divs, of which one has border-bottom or border-top set.

Please give an example of this. What's the markup? It's almost certainly more long winded and harder to read.

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#247

Post by dextorious » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 4:33 PM UTC

dlitz wrote: post #244

dextorious wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"""The price of a LaTeX rewrite would be even higher: incompatibility.""" Yeah. The only benefit is a codebase that reflects current needs and can grow in new directions and follow current practices, that programmers of today are familiar with. And also be faster, and more flexible. But what are those compared to compatibility right? (Of course people interested in pure compatibility could just continue to use the ol…

Don't you think intelligent people have better things to do than to rewrite old code, just because Apple's platform lacks important features that have been well-known for several decades? The notion that every time we have a new language/platform, we must REWRITE THE WORLD!! is absurd and a huge waste of resources. We should stop making excuses for it.

"""Don't you think intelligent people have better things to do than to rewrite old code, just because Apple's platform lacks important features that have been well-known for several decades?"""

Yeah, you probably missed the whole point of the comment, TFA, and several other stuff besides.

It's not Apple's platform that's the problem, is TeX/LaTeX that is lacking important features. In EVERY platform.

People have been hacking them on to it, but having a better codebase to start off, without the assumptions TeX/LaTeX make would really make it so much easier.

"""The notion that every time we have a new language/platform, we must REWRITE THE WORLD!! is absurd and a huge waste of resources."""

Yeah, good thing that nobody suggested anything like that in the thread.

Btw, the notion that you can add your worthless reply without first understanding what the parent poster says is absurd. You should stop making excuses for it.