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Modern LaTeX

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Re: Modern LaTeX

#141

Post by naikrovek »

eru wrote: post #110
JackeJR wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many reasons this comparison is not made. I will just touch on one. The target medium is different. For html, you have monitors of different sizes as well as windows that can be resized. For latex, you choose your target at the start: A4 paper? Screen presentation? A0 poster? With a fixed medium in mind, you can be extremely particular on where on this canvas you want a piece of text/graphic or whatever. Wi…

> For latex, you choose your target at the start: A4 paper? Screen presentation? A0 poster? You can change that as you go along.

> You can change that as you go along.

that's not the point they were trying to make. you may need to change the display target for every viewer.

Re: Modern LaTeX

#142

Post by stared »

creata wrote: post #139
stared wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As far as I know, the main differences (in the body text) between LaTeX and, say, Word, are the linebreaking algorithm (Knuth-Plass, which is used for both ragged-right and justified text) and the microtypography package. Is there anything else that contributes to the quality of LaTeX's output for ordinary English text? Typst apparently uses Knuth-Plass, but I don't see any information about microtypography.

From what I see, it is also section breaking, fonts, and general typesetting defaults, such as margins, section, etc (sure, they vary from package to package, and some are ugly, but the default are aesthetically pleasing).

Re: Modern LaTeX

#143

Post by creata »

stared wrote: post #142
creata wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, the main differences (in the body text) between LaTeX and, say, Word, are the linebreaking algorithm (Knuth-Plass, which is used for both ragged-right and justified text) and the microtypography package. Is there anything else that contributes to the quality of LaTeX's output for ordinary English text? Typst apparently uses Knuth-Plass, but I don't see any information about microtypography.

From what I see, it is also section breaking, fonts, and general typesetting defaults, such as margins, section, etc (sure, they vary from package to package, and some are ugly, but the default are aesthetically pleasing).

Oh true, section breaking is also important. And figure placement.

Things like default margins, in my opinion, are a lot easier to fix than these other issues.

Re: Modern LaTeX

#144

Post by SkiFire13 »

cjs_ac wrote: post #71
dochtman wrote: post #5

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

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 don't think this was ever my issue with Latex, which instead are mostly:

- the cryptic error messages and infinite logs

- the unintuitive ways to do stuff like store a value for later use or sum two lengths

- the very long compile times

- the amount of reliance on global state from various packages, which contributes to even more cryptic errors or weird behavior when something goes wrong

- various other quirks, e.g. the fact you often need to end a line with a comment or the newline will skrew up your content.

Re: Modern LaTeX

#145

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

tcfhgj wrote: post #129
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The problem is the user-base and acceptance of latex vs Typst. I use latex and as aware as I am about its deficiencies, I can create a doc faster in it than any other tool that I have not ever used before. I also have a bunch of utilities I created for my specific use-cases automating data into tables, figures, etc, ready for latex import.

So its a mass and momentum problem. Typst not only has to be better/easier/faster than latex, but to a degree that it justifies all of the labor and time to learn it and change all that existing template and utility infrastructure built up over decades. A high bar.

If Typst (or some other new contender) could also read and compile latex code and packages alongside its own syntax then that would be a game-changer. Then I can use all my old stuff and gradually change things over to typst (or whatever).

Re: Modern LaTeX

#146

Post by creata »

SkiFire13 wrote: post #144
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 don't think this was ever my issue with Latex, which instead are mostly: - the cryptic error messages and infinite logs - the unintuitive ways to do stuff like store a value for later use or sum two lengths - the very long compile times - the amount of reliance on global state from various packages, which contributes to even more cryptic errors or weird behavior when something goes wrong - various other quirks, e.g…

I could deal with all of the other issues if it weren't for the absurdly long compile times. I wonder where most of that time is spent.

Re: Modern LaTeX

#147

Post by MortyWaves »

tcfhgj wrote: post #129
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But I thought one of the points of latex was to emit pdf files? Are you saying these places are so backwards they only accept latex and word files? What stops them being edited by someone?

Re: Modern LaTeX

#148

Post by creata »

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.

> That's not why people use LaTeX.

Many people say that they use LaTeX because it produces more beautiful output. Microtypography is one of the reasons for that. It's especially noticeable when microtype pushes hyphens or quotes at the end of a line slightly into the margin. (A nearby comment mentions that Typst has this feature, too.)

Re: Modern LaTeX

#150

Post by rlkf »

tcfhgj wrote: post #129
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Some scientific journals, which only provides a Word template, require you to print to PDF to submit, then ships this PDF to India, where a team recreates the look of the submission in LaTeX, which is then used to compose the actual journal. I wish this was hyperbole. For these journals, you can safely create a LaTeX-template looking _almost_ the same, and get away with it.

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