Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sile: A Modern Rewrite of TeX

sile-typesetter.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 181 posts

Re: Sile: A Modern Rewrite of TeX

#81

Post by 0xmohit »

lmz wrote: post #52
0xmohit wrote: post #35

Does anyone use ConTeXt these days? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConTeXt

I also used it to typeset a project report which had some msword specific formatting rules. I found it more customizable than LaTeX in that regard, but I did have to read the docs a lot more.

I particularly like the fact that you can control floats much better than in LaTex/pdfTeX, but I agree that the community is smaller.

It appears that there is no development in ConTeXt for a while now. I haven't checked it, but it seems that they are working on LuaMetaTeX.

http://www.pragma-ade.com/luametatex-1.htm

Re: Sile: A Modern Rewrite of TeX

#82

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

ubavic wrote: post #4

Even if LaTeX3 brought some nice things to the TeX world, TeX programming is every year lagging more and more behind modern programming languages and practices. SILE has a long way to go before it can compete with math-heavy publications made with TeX, but I think it is already a good solution for typesetting technical documentation or prose fiction.

Better tools and formats have existed for sometime, the problem remains adoption. Part of the issue with mentioning a flawed tool is the supporters who come out of the woodwork to insist that the sharp edges are required, and anything more user friendly would needlessly curtail the power they require.

Personally, I have given up on Latex and write documents in pandoc markdown which I can then convert to pdf through the intermediary latex.

Re: Sile: A Modern Rewrite of TeX

#83

Post by mapierce2 »

Timwi wrote: post #79

I'm excited for the project, but disappointed that they kept the arcane syntax of TeX/LaTeX. Math expressions are hideous to write and read in LaTeX syntax.

Arcane, but I wouldn't say hideous. What's wrong with \alpha for α or \sum for Σ? Do you have a better idea than this?

Re: Sile: A Modern Rewrite of TeX

#84

Post by mapierce2 »

ilammy wrote: post #14
mmastrac wrote: post #10

TeX is one of those bits of software that's so complex to replace, it'll take another few decades (and likely a few false starts) before we can get there. The fundamentals of TeX's typesetting are amazing, but everything else is just bolted on. You'd probably want to rebuild it with its own, custom language, perhaps inspired more by modern XML/markdown rather than the old TeX language. The biggest problem that we're…

TeX itself is not really complex. The implementation is fine. The hard part is the ecosystem. Any contender is going to face a daunting task of explaining why adopters should throw away 50 years of collective work of thousands of people that went into TeX packages in CTAN. Math notation is at best 1% of the reasons why people use TeX. Packages are.

Working as a mathematician, the math notation is 100% why I use (La)TeX. Packages are just a bonus.

Re: Sile: A Modern Rewrite of TeX

#85

Post by arjvik »

Timwi wrote: post #79

I'm excited for the project, but disappointed that they kept the arcane syntax of TeX/LaTeX. Math expressions are hideous to write and read in LaTeX syntax.

I actually love the TeX syntax for math! What I do hate about LaTeX is the arcane document formatting options—i.e. drawing a figure in place requires an entire package to be imported!

Re: Sile: A Modern Rewrite of TeX

#86

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

tomrod wrote: post #36
ilammy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TeX itself is not really complex. The implementation is fine. The hard part is the ecosystem. Any contender is going to face a daunting task of explaining why adopters should throw away 50 years of collective work of thousands of people that went into TeX packages in CTAN. Math notation is at best 1% of the reasons why people use TeX. Packages are.

I think the argument comes down to complexity. Getting Markdown --> Pandoc featureset up to a reasonable fidelity is the next stage IMO, especially if Markdown can be made to support the most common downloaded TeX extension packages.

Not going to happen. If you look at the CommonMark discussions, you will find people adamant that X features not be included for varying reasons.

I think the best future option is going to be djot[0]. It is being created by the author of pandoc, who might possibly be the most qualified person in the world to appreciate all if the nuances of marking up text and parsing it.

[0] https://www.djot.net/

Re: Sile: A Modern Rewrite of TeX

#88

Post by convolvatron »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #80
xavxav wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's damning that there no truly functional grammar or spellchecker for latex, even ignoring crazy things that can be done with macros. If some billionaire wanted to 'move the needle' and change society for the better I think building a truly better latex would be worth it. Each year some of the most brilliant people in the world sacrifice on the altar of latex, that could instead be spent on more productive research…

I'd like to know what a "better LaTeX" means, and how that would move the needle, given that the only things you can't easily do in modern (Xe)LaTeX are things that you shouldn't be using TeX itself for in the first place, but have other tools do so you can simply embed their output. Especially given the availability of WYSIWYG-esque editors with "one-click" compile buttons that run all the nonsense that we used to h…

I have a difficult time with this comment. everyone I know who uses Latex including myself is painfully aware of its shortcomings and fairly steep learning curve.

maybe the graphical environments eliminate some of the pain around embedding images, or using wrapped figures.

but there is no way they manage to get around the fundamental lack of composibility. that sinking feeling you get when you just add one more thing or try to put an X inside of Y and the whole thing falls over in a pile.

Re: Sile: A Modern Rewrite of TeX

#89

Post by mapierce2 »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #19
drekipus wrote: post #7

Reminds me of reportlab, which I loathe only because of their lack of documentation. Typesetting is hard. But at this point why not use semantic html and a specially crafted css?

MathML is not even supported in browsers these days

Either KaTeX or MathJax has stepped in to support mathematical notation on the web.

https://katex.org https://www.mathjax.org

Re: Sile: A Modern Rewrite of TeX

#90

Post by gort19 »

tokai wrote: post #34
ifreund wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe try opening the PDF instead of the PNG, the PNG images of text look off to me as well but the font rendering in the PDF looks fine.

I dunno - that doesn't help anything with the layout. I still see overlapping text, tables with crooked columns, bad spacing between paragraphs and titles. The kerning got better, even though there is still something wrong with the stroke weight of the font. Maybe its just a really bad font, and not something related to Sile. Choosing a bad font to showcase a typesetting system is a bit of a redflag imo.

You’re not wrong. They look absolutely terrible, and frankly, much worse than just using Word or Pages.

A big reason why people love TeX is the quality of the output.

Post reply on HN