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The LaTeX cargo cult
81–90 of 134 posts
Re: The LaTeX cargo cult
#82> LaTeX input files are proprietary to LaTeX, just as .doc is Word. The only definition of LaTeX as a language is “whatever LaTeX does”. I am sorry but I don't see this point... Everybody is free to write a parser for .tex files and use it for whatever reason they want... You are not free to do so with .doc or other proprietary format...
> I am sorry but I don't see this point... Everybody is free to write a parser for .tex files and use it for whatever reason they want... It's great that you have the freedom to do that in theory. But it doesn't work in practice. The .tex format doesn't have a spec or independent implementations; it's complex and idiosyncratic, and there are no good general-purpose conversions from .tex to other formats (e.g. markdow…
You might want to try checking out Pandoc: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/
Re: The LaTeX cargo cult
#83I use LaTeX for anything complex or long form, and Markdown for anything else. I have yet to find something that can beat it.
Re: The LaTeX cargo cult
#84> LaTeX input files are proprietary to LaTeX, just as .doc is Word. The only definition of LaTeX as a language is “whatever LaTeX does”. I am sorry but I don't see this point... Everybody is free to write a parser for .tex files and use it for whatever reason they want... You are not free to do so with .doc or other proprietary format...
FTA: > LaTeX input files are proprietary to LaTeX, just as .doc is Word.
I must be missing something --- LaTex .tex documents are written in plain ASCII text files with pseudo-English tags indicating generally how text is to be processed (italics, bold, etc.).
FTC: > Everybody is free to write a parser for .tex files and use it for whatever reason they want...
Exactly. Pandoc supposedly converts from LaTex into many other formats (although I haven't personally tried any of those particular conversions).
Re: The LaTeX cargo cult
#85What is the alternative? The author does not propose any.
Office documents do not play well with version control systems.
HTML for printing is quite poor and buggy on features (e.g. column layout, page-relative positioning).
Re: The LaTeX cargo cult
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a couple of issues here. First, Markdown and HTML simply punt on the vast majority of the issues that TeX solves. Just as the author rightly comments that TeX is not geared toward online publication, HTML is geared toward only that model. If you want to paginate HTML or Markdown, you do it yourself. Widows and orphans are (obviously) your problem to deal with. Compared to the work that TeX is doing, Markdow…
CSS3 actually supports pagination, automatic numbering and referencing, hyphenation, justified text, and footnotes. At least that's what the spec says...
For ACM style papers you need a two-column layout. On the first page at the bottom of the left column must be a copyright notice. As far as I know, CSS cannot do that.
Re: The LaTeX cargo cult
#87> LaTeX input files are proprietary to LaTeX, just as .doc is Word. The only definition of LaTeX as a language is “whatever LaTeX does”. I am sorry but I don't see this point... Everybody is free to write a parser for .tex files and use it for whatever reason they want... You are not free to do so with .doc or other proprietary format...
FTA: > LaTeX input files are proprietary to LaTeX, just as .doc is Word. I must be missing something --- LaTex .tex documents are written in plain ASCII text files with pseudo-English tags indicating generally how text is to be processed (italics, bold, etc.). FTC: > Everybody is free to write a parser for .tex files and use it for whatever reason they want... Exactly. Pandoc supposedly converts from LaTex into many…
He means "de-facto proprietary" in that there is no standard for the output of LaTeX, except whatever LaTeX outputs. That means anyone who wants to build anither version has a huge amount of work to do endlessly duplicating the quirks of the original implementation. Imagine HTML being defined as "whatever Firefox does". You're chasing a very complicated moving target and you'll always be behind if you aren't just copying the source wholesale.
As to your second point, he mentions LaTeX converters in the article, saying you must write in a very restricted subset of LaTeX for it to convert properly. Obviously, pandoc doesn't have any way to turn everything LaTeX does into a markdown file.
That being said, I personally like LaTeX a lot. But I wanted to clarify the points the author was making.
Re: The LaTeX cargo cult
#88When I started grad school, I initially used LaTeX to prepare my articles. But then my advisor tried to open one of my documents on his machine (Windows, I'm using a Mac) and some kind of weird error came up. So we spent one whole advising session with him searching for MiKTeX and installing it, whereupon my document still wouldn't load for whatever reason. Then once BibTeX got in the mix, it became even messier. Wel…
TeX sources are only for co-authors. Everybody else gets the generated pdf. Advisors et al can annotate the pdf or print-and-scribble. All my publishing venues only gave templates and required a pdf.
Re: The LaTeX cargo cult
#89> LaTeX input files are proprietary to LaTeX, just as .doc is Word. The only definition of LaTeX as a language is “whatever LaTeX does”. I am sorry but I don't see this point... Everybody is free to write a parser for .tex files and use it for whatever reason they want... You are not free to do so with .doc or other proprietary format...
I don't think he understands what the word "proprietary" means. It means that the file format is secret or there are legal constraints on its use. Until recently Word documents clearly counted as prorietary, but now that microsoft has been forced to document its format to some degree .doc is listed as "controversially" proprietary on wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_format Even today you will need…
The point is, are there any other applications that will render a LaTeX document correctly that aren't LaTeX itself? It's open source, but in practice the code is so complicated and large no one has ever duplicated it. It's not proprietary in the traditional sense, but if you want your LaTeX file to not be mangled, you must use LaTeX itself.
Re: The LaTeX cargo cult
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this, my thesis committee wanted my thesis as a research paper (irrespective of whether my work was going to be published or not) but in the final stages the graduate college declined to approve it in spite of my committee's approval because they require a predefined format of the thesis. The change of format took me a few minutes, thanks to latex. I can't begin to imagine how much work and anxiety it wo…
My school publishes a LaTeX template for theses. After I downloaded that, I spent very little time thinking about formatting. Unfortunately my advisor doesn't do LaTeX so it kind of sucked for collaboration.
My schools's thesis template was incompatible with the packages which I had to use for a specific notation. I spent the rest of the year constantly wrestling it. The OP makes a good point, LaTeX ultimately does not separate content and presentation, nor is it declarative.