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The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

danielallington.net

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Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#11

Post by nur0n »

omaranto wrote: post #5
jhanschoo wrote: post #3

The author misses one very important feature of LaTeX that is the reason why I keep a lot of my notes in it. LaTeX exposes two mechanisms for easily making replacements all across a document. One is with macros, which you can change the definition of when necessary. The other is the simple search-and-replace, which is very powerful since you can involve macro and formatting syntax in it. Traditional word-processing a…

Probably word processors don't have an analgoue to LaTeX macros, but surely they do have search and replace, don't they?

But in WYSIWYG editors, you can only search for raw text correct? For instance, if I want to search for all bold text, its trivial to do so using a markup language, but I don't think there is really a way to do that with conventional word processors.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#12

Post by taeric »

I had a few things about TeX versus LaTeX. I think the reality is nobody really tries writing TeX.

But, ultimately my beef is the straw man that markup is bad because it is harder to read. That a graphical editor is superior because it is more readable. Instead, the advantage is that in the one you are only writing text and you are indicating special instructions to the computer. In the other, you only see what the computer is letting you see. Note that in both cases, all of those special instructions are still there. You just can't necessarily see them.

And this might sound like not a big deal. But the first time you find yourself unable to change the bold of one section of text (or centering/whatever), you will really wish you could just drop into a view that showed you why it was doing what it was doing. Which is ultimately just a markup language.

And heaven help you if you decide to upgrade word processor mid paper. Or go back and try to touch up a previous one. Markup wins because it is just plain text. And plain text wins because it is ubiquitous.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#13

Post by rocqua »

quxbar wrote: post #9

One of the best article titles I've ever seen on HN! I actually L'd OL. I think the author's thesis could be summed up as 'I like WYSIWYG more than markup', which is purely a matter of preference. I also know there are several tools which let you do this (to varying degrees of success) with LaTeX as an output. My own preference is having a complete understanding of why everything is where it is in a layout. In my exp…

I think you could replace LaTeX with VIM, and WYSIWYG with an IDE and basically replicate the entire argument for IDEs that is often given.

It largely comes down to a ease-of-use vs power and clarity trade-off.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#14

Post by rocqua »

Karliss wrote: post #10
omaranto wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably word processors don't have an analgoue to LaTeX macros, but surely they do have search and replace, don't they?

Is there really a WYSIWYG word processor supporting search and replace for formatting?

I'd be surprised if word doesn't have it.

I'd also be surprised if word's implementation was anywhere near as powerful as a full-on search replace on latex using regexps.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#15

Post by rocqua »

loukrazy wrote: post #7

I think many academics write in LaTeX because it is easier to switch between document formatting styles. If you submit to multiple journals that all have their own poorly made Word 2007 templates, even the pain of LaTeX is not so bad.

I think a lot of it is math type-setting. LaTeX just has great support because of age. Word is getting good, but there's no parity yet.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#16

Post by bane »

nur0n wrote: post #11
omaranto wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably word processors don't have an analgoue to LaTeX macros, but surely they do have search and replace, don't they?

But in WYSIWYG editors, you can only search for raw text correct? For instance, if I want to search for all bold text, its trivial to do so using a markup language, but I don't think there is really a way to do that with conventional word processors.

You use the style system built into the word processor. Then when you change the style, it changes all other instances of it. You can also trivially add new styles as you need.

In Microsoft Word for Windows it's the "Styles" bar, and on MacOS it's the "Styles Pane".

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#17

Post by ot »

I agree with the overall sentiment, but I don't think that any WYSIWYG alternative exists yet that:

- Interacts well with version control: it is trivial to maintain a LaTeX document in a git repo, and the diffs are readable (especially with --color-words)

- Makes it possible to programmatically generate formatted text, tables, graphs, possibly from external data sources, either with the internal macro language or through an external scripting language

- Has reasonable separation of content and formatting. For example when submitting the same document to multiple conferences it is almost trivial to adapt the content to the required formats.

If writing mostly prose, these may not matter much, but for technical writing I would rather not do without them.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#18

Post by x0x0 »

taeric wrote: post #12

I had a few things about TeX versus LaTeX. I think the reality is nobody really tries writing TeX. But, ultimately my beef is the straw man that markup is bad because it is harder to read. That a graphical editor is superior because it is more readable. Instead, the advantage is that in the one you are only writing text and you are indicating special instructions to the computer. In the other, you only see what the c…

The other huge advantage that you almost touched on is tex files are text, so you can source control them. This is particularly important if different people are working on different chunks of a document. You can kind of hack around this in word, but it's a giant pita.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#19

Post by Veedrac »

I write LaTeX mostly because it works and looks nice, everywhere. Reading the document is easy, because it renders every time I save, which is very frequently. I also use it because it let's me do sweet stuff when I want to, but I fully appreciate that that's just overhead for most people.

I mean look at the title on the screenshot rendered by Writer! It's horrific! I've found things improve when you move to a 15" 4k screen, but on my 1080p desktop monitors at work Writer is barely readable. You seem to be in luck you're using a Mac, since it's even worse on Linux in my experience.

> I know where it is because I put it there, but looking for it is hurting my eyes.

Perchance the fault is with your text editor. It hurts my eyes, too, but the problem disappears when I use my local editor.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#20

Post by fmoralesc »

nur0n wrote: post #11
omaranto wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably word processors don't have an analgoue to LaTeX macros, but surely they do have search and replace, don't they?

But in WYSIWYG editors, you can only search for raw text correct? For instance, if I want to search for all bold text, its trivial to do so using a markup language, but I don't think there is really a way to do that with conventional word processors.

It is possible to do it in word processors. LibreOffice Writer, for example, has a way to search for formatting and miscellaneous attributes, paragraph styles, and it supports regex search too.
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