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The LaTeX cargo cult

joshparsons.net

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Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#91

Post by habitue »

thesteamboat wrote: post #82
lmm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

Pandoc can't replicate everything LaTeX does. It can take a heavily restricted subset of LaTeX and convert it to other markup languages. Nobody to date has duplicated LaTeX quirk for quirk.

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#92

Post by titanomachy »

qznc wrote: post #85

What 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).

The article mentions markdown, HTML. I think markdown is more practical for actually writing in, and combined with pandoc it can be very powerful. Both of these formats should work well with version control. Personally, I find that markdown's minimalism goes very nicely with git. As long as you use suitable line wrapping it generates very concise and helpful diffs.

Bonus: if you're using pandoc you get native use of LaTeX's math mode.

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#93

Post by sampo »

qznc wrote: post #85

What 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).

> What is the alternative? The author does not propose any.

The author is an academic. He is concerned about writing papers. His solution is to write papers in Word, submit to journals, and let the publisher worry about the final layout.

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#94

Post by hdevalence »

sktrdie wrote: post #76

I understand some of the negative things about LaTeX but it generates outstanding documents that no other processing system can match so far. Specifically the typography: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/showcase-of-beau... http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/85904/showcase-of-bea... Also the graphs are outstanding: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/158668/nice-scientifi...

I don't see anything on that page that couldn't be done with, say, InDesign.

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#96

Post by mxfh »

qznc wrote: post #85

What 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).

Wrote my thesis in IDML, worked surprisingly well, yet Adobe InDesign is a beast of its own. And once you run into more problems you're pretty much on your own.

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#97

Post by Yetanfou »

LaTeX has one large advantage over lesser text processors which this article does not touch upon:

    Quidquid LaTeX dictum sit, altum videtur
Put two documents in front of someone used to quickly scanning scientific articles. One of them is formatted using LaTeX, the other using whatever document template Word happened to be launched with. In my experience the LaTeX-formatted article will be seen as a more reliable source than the Word-formatted one, even if the contents are similar.

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#98

Post by xorcist »

titanomachy wrote: post #92
qznc wrote: post #85

What 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).

The article mentions markdown, HTML. I think markdown is more practical for actually writing in, and combined with pandoc it can be very powerful. Both of these formats should work well with version control. Personally, I find that markdown's minimalism goes very nicely with git. As long as you use suitable line wrapping it generates very concise and helpful diffs. Bonus: if you're using pandoc you get native use of…

Even if you're using pandoc + markdown you're still dependent on LaTeX, so the question to ask is really why not write in LaTeX directly to begin with? If you already know it, and you do if you are in certain parts of academia, it's probably the easiest route. Or put differently: nobody has even gotten rejected for typing in LaTeX, if you pardon the expression.
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