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The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs

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Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs

#101

Post by Skeime »

ivansavz wrote: post #12
walnutclosefarm wrote: post #2

I 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…

> 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…

In my experience, that’s not entirely true. Some of my mathematician friends claim that they (and other people they know) often rather read the source code than the type-set result. I’m inclined to believe it because the biggest problem with LaTeX (to me) is jumping between the source and the result while editing, especially when formulas are involved. (Syncing tools help, but they’re far from perfect.) So it is often more convenient to just work with the source but this leads to problems where mis-typeset formulas don’t get recognized because too little time is spend with the result and they look fine in the source. And then people start reading the source code of other people’s papers because it’s more understandable, making the whole thing absurd.

Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs

#102

Post by [deleted] »

catiopatio wrote: post #86
ogogmad wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs

#103

Post by ogogmad »

catiopatio wrote: post #88
ogogmad wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Academia has got inertia. How long has it taken it to adopt Open Access? There's far more investment into web tech than into Latex. Browsers can do more than PDF readers.

Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs

#105

Post by cratermoon »

hanche wrote: post #81
fanpu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nope.

Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs

#106

Post by bee_rider »

generationP wrote: post #92
BrandonS113 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I have seen very few fully correct bibliographies written with bibtex in the wild. Not everything wrong with bibtex is a bug; the big problem is that bibtex is not adapted to its modern usage. A non-comprehensive list of problems: 1. Does anyone run bibtex directly from the command line? No, it's an extra step and the syntax is hard to memorize (should it run on the tex or the bib, and with or without the extension?)…

If they make it into the wild, who cares if they are fully correct? The rules for a “fully correct” bibliography are too strict anyway. DOI or URL? Who cares? The reader is just going to search for the title anyway. As long as it doesn’t bounce off the publisher it is fine (which, it must not be bouncing off the publishers if it makes it into the wild).

Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs

#107

Post by danbruc »

enriquto wrote: post #93
generationP wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Why not use it? Better question: why use it, when you can use the real thing? Mathematicians concerned by typography universally use real boldface. For example: Terrence Tao's blog, Donald Knuth, Paul Halmos (author of "how to write mathematics"), and the famous journal "Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS" which is the undisputed gold standard in mathematical typography. They use real boldface for the number sets…

In his papers Terence Tao is inconsistent [1][2][3], maybe because of formatting requirements? But boy is real boldface ugly [3] and sticks out like some tomato ketchup on a white wedding dress.

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.07441.pdf

[2] https://annals.math.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/annals-...

[3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0512114.pdf

Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs

#108

Post by orlp »

enriquto wrote: post #93
generationP wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Why not use it? Better question: why use it, when you can use the real thing? Mathematicians concerned by typography universally use real boldface. For example: Terrence Tao's blog, Donald Knuth, Paul Halmos (author of "how to write mathematics"), and the famous journal "Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS" which is the undisputed gold standard in mathematical typography. They use real boldface for the number sets…

Who is Terrence Tao? Do you mean Terence Tao?

(if we are nitpicking about typography...)

Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs

#109

Post by charlieyu1 »

Shorel wrote: post #59
walnutclosefarm wrote: post #2

I 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…

As ugly as it may appear to you, it is so much more readable than MathML Core. TeX is, in fact, still better than all the alternatives to represent mathematical equations in plain text created so far.

MathML is not a writing format, it is an output format that is designed to be machine readable.

And I think most people complain about the non-equation parts of LaTeX.

Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs

#110

Post by ogogmad »

catiopatio wrote: post #86
ogogmad wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This comment makes me see red.

First of all, this:

> None of those are a complete replacement, except maybe Lyx, and it’s based on LaTeX.

Source: Your [censored].

> Huh? You must be totally ignorant of the uses of LaTeX.

Outside of academic papers and books, what?

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