Several of the images are broken links. Perhaps an example of Muphry's Law?
Should be fixed now. First time hearing about Muphry's Law, definitely gave me a chuckle!
> First time hearing about Muphry's Law
It was probably a mipsrint.
The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
81–90 of 149 posts
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> RE: ugly and fragile instance of a poorly designed, inherently unreadable, archaic language That's a lot of hate for LaTeX, and some of it is warranted, but you have to think of the results, not the source... It's not the source code that people are in love with, but the result (rendered PDF or via MathJax/KaTeX on the web). The "ugly" markup syntax allows you to produce beautiful, versatile, well designed, readabl…
What a great summary! Unfortunately, many discussions of TeX vs alternatives are somewhat thin on details and are instead trading on emotions. As you mentioned in your comment, the choices made by Knuth are far from random. He even made it possible for anyone to change them! Not many people using TeX know that the choice of the backslash as an 'escape' character may be easily changed. Even the necessity of curly brac…
> It is telling that no real alternatives have emerged during the 40+ years of TeX's existence.
But what does it tell you that such an ugliness remains and the way to fix it is relatively unknown? It surely can't be a pro-TeX tell!
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#83Most of this is good advice, but I don't see the \mathbbm vs. \mathbb distinction as anything other than subjective taste. Also, I use things like \newcommand{\abs}[1]{\left| #1 \right|} in the preamble. This way, I can use \abs{...} without any asterisks, and it automatically adjusts its size. In the 1% situations where I don't want it to adjust the size, I write the delimiters manually. Making maths look good in La…
Both mathbbm and mathbb are wrong for number sets. These fonts look like the blackboard hack that you use to simulate boldface using chalk. On a computer you don't have this problem and you can simply use mathbf (actual boldface).
It might have originated as a hack, but now it's a font in its own right. Why not use it?
It's quite common to see \mathbb{R} used for the actual set of reals, while \mathbf{R} means a totally ordered field (i.e., an abstract object behaving somewhat like \mathbb{R}). The distinction is deliberate and the notation is good.
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#84I have a question: if what you have to write in order to create your beautiful and aesthetically pleasing proof, and thereby "establish your ethos and character" (presumably as a righteous and good), is an ugly and fragile instance of a poorly designed, inherently unreadable, archaic language that embodies none of the characteristics you are after, can the result really be "a work of art that combines both the precis…
TeX is not unreadable. It's hard to automatically parse, but it is easy to read by a human, unless the authors have been piling hacks and too-smart-by-half constructs. The latter case happens every once in a while but is generally pretty rare.
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#85Most of this is good advice, but I don't see the \mathbbm vs. \mathbb distinction as anything other than subjective taste. Also, I use things like \newcommand{\abs}[1]{\left| #1 \right|} in the preamble. This way, I can use \abs{...} without any asterisks, and it automatically adjusts its size. In the 1% situations where I don't want it to adjust the size, I write the delimiters manually. Making maths look good in La…
This is the first time I have seen such a complaint against bibtex. Yes bib files are finicky to write correctly, and bibtex can be a pain to use. But bibliographies are never "imprecise, missing important info or plain wrong." I've written 100s of pieces with latex+bibtex, papers, websites, reports, books. bibtex always makes citations and bib entries look like what I or the publisher need. If something is missing, then one is using the wrong style.
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
What a great summary! Unfortunately, many discussions of TeX vs alternatives are somewhat thin on details and are instead trading on emotions. As you mentioned in your comment, the choices made by Knuth are far from random. He even made it possible for anyone to change them! Not many people using TeX know that the choice of the backslash as an 'escape' character may be easily changed. Even the necessity of curly brac…
Asciidoc, TexMacs, LyX, reStructuredText, Markdown (admittedly, only ish). None of them have become the standard. But some of the ones above - though excluding Markdown - are a complete replacement. Actually, even Markdown stands a chance if supplemented with enough HTML and CSS. HTML and CSS have practically replaced most non-maths uses of Latex.
None of those are a complete replacement, except maybe Lyx, and it’s based on LaTeX.
> HTML and CSS have practically replaced most non-maths uses of Latex.
Huh? You must be totally ignorant of the uses of LaTeX.
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
What a great summary! Unfortunately, many discussions of TeX vs alternatives are somewhat thin on details and are instead trading on emotions. As you mentioned in your comment, the choices made by Knuth are far from random. He even made it possible for anyone to change them! Not many people using TeX know that the choice of the backslash as an 'escape' character may be easily changed. Even the necessity of curly brac…
> It is telling that no real alternatives have emerged during the 40+ years of TeX's existence. But what does it tell you that such an ugliness remains and the way to fix it is relatively unknown? It surely can't be a pro-TeX tell!
It tells me that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, i.e. what one may perceive as ugliness, countless others will view as beauty or, at least functionality. I personally think that the ugliest design in existence is Python but I admit my opinion is not common. Moreover, I use Python myself, since syntax is not the only important thing in a language (the ecosystem is Python's undisputable strength). It is also unclear to me what specific 'ugliness' in TeX is fixed by, say TeXmacs. Is TeXmacs internal language dramatically (or any) better than TeX? Does not seem so. The WYSIWYG option? There are WYSIWYG editors for TeX as well.
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I see it, this only proves my point. As you write: '...None of them have become the standard...' and this is at the center of the argument. TeX may not be ideal but it strikes the correct balance to become and stay standard for so many years. One can do pretty much anything in bare Postscript (and I am ashamed to admit, I have) or even 'handmade' PDF but it does not make it a good alternative to TeX. I have e…
I disagree. I think Latex will soon become legacy like Cobol. HTML and CSS basically do a lot more than Latex does - except for maths things - and are far more widely known, and far more forgiving. Also importantly, they support hyperlinks, animations, and inline interactive scripts. It seems that HTML and CSS with the appropriate CSS styles and shorthands (like Markdown) could eat up everything that Latex does and m…
> I think Latex will soon become legacy like Cobol.
LaTeX’s usage has only increased with the creation and growth of the web. What makes you think it’s going anywhere?
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#89Is there a reasonable assessment of where LaTeX's capabilities are falling short? One of these may be laying out tables without need for manual intervention/adjustment. Another could be easier ways to customise look and feel of documents.For example the "letter" document class is too bare-bones.
There are lots of things that are worth improving.
The lack of accessibility features (structured PDF, alt-text), or more precisely the glacial pace at which they are getting developed, is grating. In truth, a well-written TeX file is itself accessible in most reasonable senses, but not everyone posts TeX sources of their work. It reminds me of the early 2000s when making PDFs was considered high wizardry and everyone was dealing with half-broken PS and DVI.
Better tables would be nice, but it's not clear what a perfect support for tables would even be. Unlike HTML, TeX has deal with page size limitations, and it's far from clear how tables should adapt to those.
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#90One thing I don't miss about my research years is latex. It does produce beautiful documents and kudos to Knuth/Lamport for producing a system that stood the test of time. But what a pain to use.
It only lives on through cut and paste previous latex files and stack overflow lol