Great cheat sheet, not enough folks know about \mid and friends.
Once you’re in nyc let’s grab coffee sometime!
The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
11–20 of 149 posts
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#12I have a question: if what you have to write in order to create your beautiful and aesthetically pleasing proof, and thereby "establish your ethos and character" (presumably as a righteous and good), is an ugly and fragile instance of a poorly designed, inherently unreadable, archaic language that embodies none of the characteristics you are after, can the result really be "a work of art that combines both the precis…
> RE: ugly and fragile instance of a poorly designed, inherently unreadable, archaic language
That's a lot of hate for LaTeX, and some of it is warranted, but you have to think of the results, not the source... It's not the source code that people are in love with, but the result (rendered PDF or via MathJax/KaTeX on the web). The "ugly" markup syntax allows you to produce beautiful, versatile, well designed, readable, and modern math equations.
As for the latex source code, I think it's redeeming qualities are the fact that it is a standard (with over 40+ years track record). It's definitely not readable, or user-friendly (try adding or forgetting a single }), but people seem to get used to it after a while.
Another thing I could say in defence of tex syntax, is that it is necessary complexity. If it wasn't the backslash-macros and curly braces, we would need some other way to express structure in equations, so the same complexity would be present in a new look.
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#13I have a question: if what you have to write in order to create your beautiful and aesthetically pleasing proof, and thereby "establish your ethos and character" (presumably as a righteous and good), is an ugly and fragile instance of a poorly designed, inherently unreadable, archaic language that embodies none of the characteristics you are after, can the result really be "a work of art that combines both the precis…
Generally agreed, writing should be a tool that supports clear thinking, and a giant mess of unreadable markup is not amenable for thinking.
I’m still reading through this post, but it seems to have some great advice for making that situation at least a little better, like the trick with mathtools to make paired braces more readable
I collaborate with some academics that strongly prefer to do all writing and editing in MS Word, but I’ve personally found that to be a lot worse for supporting clear thinking, especially if any math is involved
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#14TeXmacs allows you to typeset beautiful proofs via a WYSIWYG editor without the pain of TeX/LaTeX. Note that its name is doubly misleading since it is not based on TeX nor Emacs. It is however inspired by both. TeXmacs produces documents of similar quality to TeX/LaTeX.
I was initially dreading that it would be something inefficient like the equation symbol selector in Word, but after viewing the video demo on their website and seeing the speed of typing aided by heavy use of shortcuts, I'm intrigued. I'll try it out someday!
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#15Great cheat sheet, not enough folks know about \mid and friends. Once you’re in nyc let’s grab coffee sometime!
Thank you! :) and sure!
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#16Several of the images are broken links. Perhaps an example of Muphry's Law?
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#17I have a question: if what you have to write in order to create your beautiful and aesthetically pleasing proof, and thereby "establish your ethos and character" (presumably as a righteous and good), is an ugly and fragile instance of a poorly designed, inherently unreadable, archaic language that embodies none of the characteristics you are after, can the result really be "a work of art that combines both the precis…
I am still looking for a text markup system that gives me good PDFs with DTP-grade text setting and and is plain-text, so I can work with standard version control programs. Right now, only TeX/LaTeX comes close. AsciiDoctor is not doing citations well, Markdown is basically a mess which differs in implementation, also footnotes and citations.
Do you have something better?
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#18TeXmacs allows you to typeset beautiful proofs via a WYSIWYG editor without the pain of TeX/LaTeX. Note that its name is doubly misleading since it is not based on TeX nor Emacs. It is however inspired by both. TeXmacs produces documents of similar quality to TeX/LaTeX.
TeXmacs is a great project, no doubt, but you have mentioned WYSIWYG as one of the advantages. This is the main reason I do not use TeXmacs to create documents (I do use it to create online lectures). You may like or dislike LaTeX/TeX (and the discussion is usually too emotionally charged for my taste) but the fact that it is a text format (not as verbose as, say, XML, at that) which is more or less standard is a deciding factor for many people, including myself. On a personal level, while I slightly dislike LaTeX style macros, I absolutely adore TeX's design (yes, including syntax). It is a matter of taste, of course. I am aware that TeXmacs can export LaTeX, it is not quite the same. LyX is another (better in my view) WYSIWYG option, if one is desired.
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#19TeXmacs allows you to typeset beautiful proofs via a WYSIWYG editor without the pain of TeX/LaTeX. Note that its name is doubly misleading since it is not based on TeX nor Emacs. It is however inspired by both. TeXmacs produces documents of similar quality to TeX/LaTeX.
Is there an equivalent of \NewCommand in TexMacs? I can't find anything by Googling.
Re: The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs
#20TeXmacs allows you to typeset beautiful proofs via a WYSIWYG editor without the pain of TeX/LaTeX. Note that its name is doubly misleading since it is not based on TeX nor Emacs. It is however inspired by both. TeXmacs produces documents of similar quality to TeX/LaTeX.
TeXmacs is a great project, no doubt, but you have mentioned WYSIWYG as one of the advantages. This is the main reason I do not use TeXmacs to create documents (I do use it to create online lectures). You may like or dislike LaTeX/TeX (and the discussion is usually too emotionally charged for my taste) but the fact that it is a text format (not as verbose as, say, XML, at that) which is more or less standard is a dec…
A TexMacs file can be opened up in any text editor. It's readable -- XML-like without quite being XML. Presumably, this can be used to work around some limitations of the WYSIWYG editor.
I think LyX's file format is not as well-designed.