300 comments in 24 hours.
nothing better than people word-fighting about writing tools...
-bowerbird
Neovim
271–280 of 372 posts
Re: Neovim
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it doesn't work fine. LateX is slow, inconsistent and needs to be ran multiple times to give a correct result, it has no API, is not extendable in a sane way, it's source code is so arcane there's books written about it, and if you've read the books the only thing you've learned is that trying to reimplement LateX is a fool's errand. And it's syntax is ugly. Markdown is better. Microsoft Word is better. They just…
1) You run latex twice only on really large and complex documents like books, and if you're writing books (not editing, see antipope.org for details) in Word, then you need professional help. 2) Markdown and LaTeX are designed for different tasks. Next you'll be telling me that if you have a leafblower, you have no need for a chainsaw. 3) Find me the structured and annotated data streams first - and show me that the…
...if you have a leafblower, you have no need for a chainsaw...
Yes, but a leafblower combined with a chainsaw...
I don't know about you, but that's a tool I could find some uses for.
Re: Neovim
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hardly think so. Let's address them: > "LateX is slow, inconsistent and needs to be ran multiple times to give a correct result" It is not slow, it runs in under a second on most documents I have authored. > "Inconsistent" I'm not sure what tinco meant by this, but it does in fact return the same results for the same file across multiple runs. > "Needs to be run multiple times to give the correct result" This is tr…
It is not slow, it runs in under a second on most documents I have authored. It is slow. On my PhD thesis, it took more than one minute at some point, on an SSD. Not very convenient if you are tweaking figures and equations, and want to preview a change quickly.
Then you did it wrong. You should have just factored your thesis in multiple files, for example used one for each chapter.
Re: Neovim
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are comparing Word and Markdown to LaTeX I think it's clear you haven't really used LaTeX.
Oh get over yourself. Every one of the criticisms he levelled against latex is spot on, and you pick up on the fact that he mentions Word is easier to use (which, by a long, long way, it it).
The last time I used Word it was an absolute nightmare to typeset equations in it. In theoretical physics basically every page contains at least one equation, it would be complete madness to try typesetting that in word.
Re: Neovim
#275Thanks for trying to do what many of us secretly wished we could do but can't because of time/skill constraints. I will definitely move to NeoVim the second it's packaged (is it yet?), regardless if you've changed anything yet. I hate the ideas many programmers have about backwards compatibility, that it's more important than development speed and modern concepts. There is nothing holy about Unix era software, chance…
Oh, it's a real flamewar and people still seem to be here, so I want to add a little constructiveness to it. Vim, bash, LaTeX. Let's postpone vim, as the whole topic is [supposed to be] about it. And we have enough shells (zsh, fish) instead of bash, many people (me too) tried it and have chosen bash (although I use IPython quite often). And I don't know sane and fully functional alternative to LaTeX. (Markdown and co don't count as they don't have same control on output.)
So let's stick with LaTeX. There are 2 categories of people: those who think that LaTeX is fine for its usecases and those who think that something is wrong and could be done better. Fine is fine, so lets concentrate on the second category. I'll recite main complaints: slowness, horrible syntax, arcane source code, impossibility to divide semantics from representation. (Did I miss something?)
I guess many of us are able to program. So why somebody, right here, right now, wouldn't create a github/bitbucket repo, post link on it and explain, what exactly in your opinion could be done better? I personally would probably participate if somebody has a plan sane and explicit enough.
Re: Neovim
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) You run latex twice only on really large and complex documents like books, and if you're writing books (not editing, see antipope.org for details) in Word, then you need professional help. 2) Markdown and LaTeX are designed for different tasks. Next you'll be telling me that if you have a leafblower, you have no need for a chainsaw. 3) Find me the structured and annotated data streams first - and show me that the…
...if you have a leafblower, you have no need for a chainsaw... Yes, but a leafblower combined with a chainsaw... I don't know about you, but that's a tool I could find some uses for.
Like scaring children?
Re: Neovim
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am very confused by the implication that TeX or LaTeX make it easy to create a document that looks exactly the way you want. Unless you want it to look like a paper presented to a publication that has a mandatory style, and a package is available with that style, it's just not true. And that is almost the whole point. Most people are idiots about how to present written material, so TeX and friends make those decisi…
with better support for collaboration, with Word How? This is an honest question. I wouldn't use Word anyway, but I am just not aware of anything that could come close to Git + LaTeX in terms of collaboration support.
Fair question.
I've been doing projects with people who have no technical background to speak of, but immense domain knowledge. They wrote their theses in word (god help them), published in journals that required submissions in word (there are more and more of the things), and include a lot of figures in their papers or grant proposals.
Sharepoint helps a lot with collaboration, but even word's basic change tracking and commenting facilities are good for people working around a document via email, Dropbox, or even git.
Word still creates those weird situations for which it is infamous, but they are generally rare. Also, word has become much more stable, even with larger documents.
Re: Neovim
#278Thanks for trying to do what many of us secretly wished we could do but can't because of time/skill constraints. I will definitely move to NeoVim the second it's packaged (is it yet?), regardless if you've changed anything yet. I hate the ideas many programmers have about backwards compatibility, that it's more important than development speed and modern concepts. There is nothing holy about Unix era software, chance…
I am honestly amazed at how feistily every 'hacker' here is defending LaTeX in response to your comment. I agree with you for the most part. This whole "it's apples to oranges" claim is bullshit. Both Word as well as LaTeX can be used for anything from writing a resume, making a technical paper with a few simple equations, to writing an entire Vector or Linear Algebra textbooks. When you have two options for doing th…
The first time I used Latex was when I was around 16 and did a Math competition. I first tried to use Word to typeset equations and it was a nightmare to use. So I looked around on the Internet for an alternative and found LaTeX. I think it has a very low barrier of entry, all you really need is
\documentclass{article} \begin{document} Hi. \end{document}
All the additional commands can be learned on the fly, if you have a reference at hand. I'm sure there are commands in Word for creating a title page, a table of contents, a bibliography, an index, correctly numbering equations and updating references if you add additional ones, but once I discovered Latex I have never looked back and have not used Word in a long time.
Re: Neovim
#279Re: Neovim
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unix was here before all those conventions you listed. So go back in time and tell Windows and Mac software vendors to stop making everyone change their muscle memory in order to use some new software... But seriously, this is a complaint I hear from undergrads in CS all the time. My answer is the same every single time: stop whining and get over it. You're a professional now, you use professional tools and sometimes…
They might "whine" if you used the steering wheel on the 18 wheeler to control acceleration and the left and right pedals to steer though...
That's true, but I contend that the differences between Unix and Windows tools (because that's really what we're talking about here) just isn't that large. For instance, in most terminals you can paste into Vim with Ctrl-Shift-v provided you are in insert mode (although you may end up with weird indentation and such). You can copy with Ctrl-Shift-c. You can use the arrow keys to move around if you really want to do so.
So yes, there are differences, but the nix people have gone to great lengths to bridge the gap, to the point that I have zero sympathy for people who can't make the switch (note that I'm not saying everyone needs to use nix, that's a totally different debate, just that anyone who wants to should be able to).