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Modern LaTeX

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Re: Modern LaTeX

#121

Post by josephg »

godelski wrote: post #118
josephg wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is you're using the wrong tool. Yes, I think we're in violent agreement that markdown is the wrong tool for the job. That's why I find it baffling how so many blogging & documentation tools lock you in to using markdown, with its anaemic feature set (eg mdbook). Even markdown + inline HTML is wildly inadequate. For example, you can't make automatically numbered sections. Or figures with links in the text.…

> That's why I find it baffling how so many blogging & documentation tools lock you in to using I feel this about so many things and it boggles my mind why people often choose to do things the hardest way possible. Honestly, I think a good portion of it of the unwillingness to toss something aside and write something new. If it's just a hack on a hack on a hack on a hack then no wonder it's shit. It's funny that ofte…

> I'm worried that with LLMs and vibe coding on the rise we're just going to get more.

I'm hoping the opposite, at least eventually. I think before long it'll be easy to get chatgpt to build your own version of whatever you want, from scratch.

Eg, "Hey, I want something kinda like markdown but with these other features. Write me the spec. Implement a renderer for documents in Go - and write a vs code extension + language server for it."

But if that happens, we'll get way more fragmentation of the computing ecosystem. Maybe to the point that you really need the memory of a LLM to even know what's out there - let alone understand how to glue everything together.

Re: Modern LaTeX

#122

Post by n2h4 »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #16
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #3

Trivia: the correct capitalization is LaTeX and it's pronounced "lay-tek". Knuth & friends were on a roll naming things - the 80s must've been quite a time. As always wiki knows all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX

The special naming convention is mostly used as a form of elitist gatekeeping; it's a tribal shibboleth. You should be able to figure out whether someone is talking about latex (polymer) or latex (markup) from context, so having a special naming convention is rather pretentious and superfluous. If calling it lay-tek was important, they should've called it laytek. Historically, as I understand it, distinctions between…

in both arXiv and LaTeX, X is greek(chi).

Re: Modern LaTeX

#123

Post by cjs_ac »

blueflow wrote: post #120
cjs_ac wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the well-deserved complaints about TeX's and LaTeX's syntax, Typst only makes this worse , by repurposing even more characters as markup.

I'll put my finger on the perceived weak point: Which characters ? Are they listed somewhere?

Sure: the Typst syntax is detailed here: https://typst.app/docs/reference/syntax/

The non-control characters of ASCII are largely characters you might actually want to put in a document. TeX uses some of these as markup, e.g., the dollar sign to bracket maths mode and the ampersand as a column separator in tables. Typst takes this much further, using plus and minus signs to introduce list items, at signs for references, and so on.

Ideally, all visible characters should produce themselves in the printed output, except for the backslash introducing control sequences that represent all of the markup and braces for delimiting the extent of parameters to those control sequences. This would produce a very predictable and easily-parsed syntax.

Re: Modern LaTeX

#124

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

dev_l1x_be wrote: post #115

For me Typst replaced Latex years ago. pros: - one small compiler that can output: pdf, png, svg, html - compilation is fast (see below) - syntax is much cleaner than Latex - few ways of to a thing - already has all the templates most people need - tooling is good enough with VS Code - supports SVG images cons: - less users? time typst compile cv.typ ________________________________________________________ Executed i…

A big con is that there are no typst templates for journals and conferences that academics submit papers to. For me, this is a show-stopper. I would love to be able to ditch latex because honestly it's old and it shows a lot, in spite of apologists saying that it's perfect. But 90+% of my usage starts from a conference or journal template, so at the moment it's not gonna happen.

Re: Modern LaTeX

#125

Post by pbasista »

kaoD wrote: post #59
misnome wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Pricing”, “Sign Up” Ah yes, this definitely is the “Modern” approach. There does seem to be an open source, non-SAAS part, but information about it looks pretty deliberately buried.

Well everyone likes free software (as in freedom and beer) but 0 of you pay, while on a 6 figure salary. Meanwhile no hesitation to pay AWS, Netflix, Amazon, etc. all of them net negative contributors to free software. So... yeah.

> 0 of you pay

That is an overly broad generalization.

> no hesitation to pay AWS, Netflix, Amazon, etc.

Again, an overly broad generalization.

I am unsure what kind of conclusion you can objectively make out of such generic statements.

Re: Modern LaTeX

#126

Post by billfruit »

dochtman wrote: post #5

Typst is the modern LaTeX. https://typst.app/

Does it have better/easier tables. Does it support complex tables like with images in it, with alternating horizontal or vertical text in cells, tables inside tables, tables with alternative row/column shading, etc while still supporting automatic wrapping to contents, etc?

Re: Modern LaTeX

#127

Post by stared »

dev_l1x_be wrote: post #115

For me Typst replaced Latex years ago. pros: - one small compiler that can output: pdf, png, svg, html - compilation is fast (see below) - syntax is much cleaner than Latex - few ways of to a thing - already has all the templates most people need - tooling is good enough with VS Code - supports SVG images cons: - less users? time typst compile cv.typ ________________________________________________________ Executed i…

Is there any side-by-side comparison of a page created by LaTeX by Typst?

My main selling points is that with LaTeX, it is easy to create typography shines beauty for a distance. (Often way better that most of books you find in stores.) With other typesetting systems, usually it is not the case. Yet, I am waiting for new things that offer simplicity, yet have same (or better!) visuals that LaTeX.

Re: Modern LaTeX

#128

Post by billfruit »

IshKebab wrote: post #58
croemer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typst doesn't (yet) have one of the features that make LaTex stand out: microtypography. See https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/4693

That's not why people use LaTeX. I doubt most users even know about it. The standout feature is fantastic support for equations and figures. That and Computer Modern. I bet a significant number of users use it because of that! Personally I would just use LyX. Its equation editor is actually fantastic.

But latex support for tables are very unergonomic.

Re: Modern LaTeX

#129

Post by tcfhgj »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #124
dev_l1x_be wrote: post #115

For me Typst replaced Latex years ago. pros: - one small compiler that can output: pdf, png, svg, html - compilation is fast (see below) - syntax is much cleaner than Latex - few ways of to a thing - already has all the templates most people need - tooling is good enough with VS Code - supports SVG images cons: - less users? time typst compile cv.typ ________________________________________________________ Executed i…

A big con is that there are no typst templates for journals and conferences that academics submit papers to. For me, this is a show-stopper. I would love to be able to ditch latex because honestly it's old and it shows a lot , in spite of apologists saying that it's perfect. But 90+% of my usage starts from a conference or journal template, so at the moment it's not gonna happen.

I don't feel like the template itself is the issue. In typst it's quite easy to recreate the templates without being years into typst (according to my experience).

The real problem is acceptance of non-word/latex papers

Re: Modern LaTeX

#130

Post by IshKebab »

croemer wrote: post #70
IshKebab wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not why people use LaTeX. I doubt most users even know about it. The standout feature is fantastic support for equations and figures. That and Computer Modern. I bet a significant number of users use it because of that! Personally I would just use LyX. Its equation editor is actually fantastic.

TFA dedicated one of the book's 11 chapters to it. Doesn't matter whether most users know about it or not.

A feature can only make LaTeX stand out if people actually know it exists.
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