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Begin LaTeX in minutes

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Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#131

Post by tagrun »

CalChris wrote: post #59

This is a good beginner doc. I'd never used LaTeX until about a year ago when I needed it to write a paper. The first thing I wondered was how to install it. Surely in 2015 installation would be a snap. It'd be in the App Store. Or Homebrew. Do not install LaTeX. Use it in the cloud. I use www.overleaf.com which is awesome. Similarly, I use www.draw.io to create PDFs for my drawings. \usepackage{microtype} \usepackag…

What?

Do install LaTeX. I don't know (and frankly don't care) how hard it is under Windows, Mac or Android, but it has been readily available from the package managers with GNU/* and most BSDs for decades, easy to install and use. There are plenty of editors like gummi, kile, texmacs or lyx.

Seriously. You're asking people to give up their freedoms for what? To avoid typing a single line "sudo apt-get install gummi texlive-latex-base"?

I personally do stay away from "cloud"y things (or whatever buzzword you prefer for SaaSS in the stylish Apple-land), and recommend people that I care about around me to do so: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#132

Post by detaro »

tagrun wrote: post #131
CalChris wrote: post #59

This is a good beginner doc. I'd never used LaTeX until about a year ago when I needed it to write a paper. The first thing I wondered was how to install it. Surely in 2015 installation would be a snap. It'd be in the App Store. Or Homebrew. Do not install LaTeX. Use it in the cloud. I use www.overleaf.com which is awesome. Similarly, I use www.draw.io to create PDFs for my drawings. \usepackage{microtype} \usepackag…

What? Do install LaTeX. I don't know (and frankly don't care) how hard it is under Windows, Mac or Android, but it has been readily available from the package managers with GNU/* and most BSDs for decades, easy to install and use. There are plenty of editors like gummi, kile, texmacs or lyx. Seriously. You're asking people to give up their freedoms for what? To avoid typing a single line "sudo apt-get install gummi t…

Windows has easy-to-use distributions of LaTeX as well (e.g. MikTex).

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#133

Post by bo1024 »

CalChris wrote: post #59

This is a good beginner doc. I'd never used LaTeX until about a year ago when I needed it to write a paper. The first thing I wondered was how to install it. Surely in 2015 installation would be a snap. It'd be in the App Store. Or Homebrew. Do not install LaTeX. Use it in the cloud. I use www.overleaf.com which is awesome. Similarly, I use www.draw.io to create PDFs for my drawings. \usepackage{microtype} \usepackag…

$ apt-get install texlive-full

Not sure how much more of a snap installation of something can get....

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#134

Post by kevindong »

tagrun wrote: post #131
CalChris wrote: post #59

This is a good beginner doc. I'd never used LaTeX until about a year ago when I needed it to write a paper. The first thing I wondered was how to install it. Surely in 2015 installation would be a snap. It'd be in the App Store. Or Homebrew. Do not install LaTeX. Use it in the cloud. I use www.overleaf.com which is awesome. Similarly, I use www.draw.io to create PDFs for my drawings. \usepackage{microtype} \usepackag…

What? Do install LaTeX. I don't know (and frankly don't care) how hard it is under Windows, Mac or Android, but it has been readily available from the package managers with GNU/* and most BSDs for decades, easy to install and use. There are plenty of editors like gummi, kile, texmacs or lyx. Seriously. You're asking people to give up their freedoms for what? To avoid typing a single line "sudo apt-get install gummi t…

I personally use www.sharelatex.com (which is open sourced under the AGPL license).

Downloading LaTeX locally on macOS (or rather, Mac OS X as it was called at the time) is not very difficult. As I recall, it's basically just: download this .pkg file, run it, and you're set. That being said, I did _not_ enjoy having LaTeX installed locally. It wasn't harmful, it just wasn't at all beneficial compared to using an online LaTeX service.

The install size is easily tens of thousands of files (totalling a couple GBs), most of which are only a couple hundred KBs each. The vast majority of those files went unused. It clogged up my file system, gave me a marginal amount of benefits, and figuring out how to change the config files to do one _tiny_ thing was horrifically difficult.

As a result, I migrated to using ShareLaTeX. It was just simpler than having to manage the install myself. The value proposition of a (hosted instance of) ShareLaTeX is that I can use LaTeX from any computer (connected to the Internet) to access any of my automatically synchronized files and have an automatically updated install of LaTeX. I personally found that value proposition worthwhile.

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#135

Post by tagrun »

kevindong wrote: post #134
tagrun wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Do install LaTeX. I don't know (and frankly don't care) how hard it is under Windows, Mac or Android, but it has been readily available from the package managers with GNU/* and most BSDs for decades, easy to install and use. There are plenty of editors like gummi, kile, texmacs or lyx. Seriously. You're asking people to give up their freedoms for what? To avoid typing a single line "sudo apt-get install gummi t…

I personally use www.sharelatex.com (which is open sourced under the AGPL license). Downloading LaTeX locally on macOS (or rather, Mac OS X as it was called at the time) is not very difficult. As I recall, it's basically just: download this .pkg file, run it, and you're set. That being said, I did _not_ enjoy having LaTeX installed locally. It wasn't harmful, it just wasn't at all beneficial compared to using an onli…

This is a false anecdotal dichotomy: either install latex on your computer at the cost of "clogging up your filesystem" (whatever that means), or give up your freedoms.

textlive-most (which is a meta package which includes almost everything an ordinary user need) uses 1.2GBs on Arch Linux, so for sure it's not "couple of GBs". And even if it takes a couple of GBs: I'm using ~60GBs in my root filesystem, and never experienced any "clogging" (granted, GNU/Linux doesn't use Windows Registry).

If installing programs "clogs up your file system" in Apple's proprietary fork of BSD (don't know/care how they call/stylize it these days), another viable option, before throwing away your freedoms, is to consider switching to a different filesystem or operating system which doesn't "clog up" when you install new programs (and which isn't riddled with backdoors and doesn't spy on you, like Apple products do: https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.en.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-surveillance.en.... ). Now I'm not sure whether this is an issue with HFS+ or a more general one within Darwin, but what is the point of having harddisks with large capacities (measured in TB these days) if you can't actually use it?

> ShareLaTeX is that I can use LaTeX from any computer (connected to the Internet) to access any of my automatically synchronized files and have an automatically updated install of LaTeX. I personally found that value proposition worthwhile.

I'm not seeing any convincing arguments or any "worthwhile propositions" here. With GNU/* and *BSD, that burden is on the package maintainers. System updates do include latex updates too (I know that it isn't the case with proprietary system you're using, but that's an argument for switching to a free/libre OS, not throwing away your freedoms). And I am able to synchronize my files (including .tex files) files across devices over the internet using syncthing, while still not yielding my rights and data to others, and there are plenty of FOSS alternatives to syncthing too.

And even if your original dichotomy was a real dichotomy, I would encourage people to protect their freedoms, not to throw it away for convenience.

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#136

Post by ozborn »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #115
1wd wrote: post #42

Just don't try anything that isn't in your typical math paper. There are thousands of LaTeX packages, because they are all broken if you use them in a slightly unexpected way, so (reminiscent of JavaScript) a new package is created to "fix" it. Tables? Here you go. Oh, you wanted nested tables? For that you need to switch to an entirely different package. Oh, and that one doesn't support splitting up tables over mult…

It's definitely not just you. There's no such thing as LaTeX. There are 2^1000 different things called LaTeX, all subtly incompatible with each other. I suppose LaTeX can be made to work as an authoring tool where you're the only author and you're producing PDF from it. But for sharing documentation it's hopeless. I've never been able to compile somebody else's LaTeX source. There's always some weird library dependen…

There are at least a couple of different online LaTeX editors out there that make collaboration pretty easy and take compile worries out of the equation. I've used both ShareLaTeX and Overleaf with success, but there are other ones out there too.

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#137

Post by nxc18 »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #119
pjmlp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used it for the language manual used on our compiler design lectures, thesis monthly reports and final thesis. Nowadays I just use Markdown, Word or Libre Office. In some projects at work we used Docbook and DITA, coupled with text processor like applications. Where Latex really shines is writing papers full of mathematical or scientifical notation, with a huge references section at end. I don't see a place for it…

I don't know, I don't find Word or LibrePffice documents to be very visually appealing. Maybe I spend a lot of time reading nicely typeset documents, but MS Office just doesn't cut it any more. You can compile from markdown to LaTeX, getting nearly the best of both worlds.

In 5 minutes you can configure your word document to look just like something LaTeX would output.

It is interesting that learning LaTeX is a completely reasonable thing to spend time on but learning the basics of styles (surprisingly similar to how styles work everywhere else) is thoroughly unacceptable.

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#139

Post by tagrun »

tagrun wrote: post #135
kevindong wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally use www.sharelatex.com (which is open sourced under the AGPL license). Downloading LaTeX locally on macOS (or rather, Mac OS X as it was called at the time) is not very difficult. As I recall, it's basically just: download this .pkg file, run it, and you're set. That being said, I did _not_ enjoy having LaTeX installed locally. It wasn't harmful, it just wasn't at all beneficial compared to using an onli…

This is a false anecdotal dichotomy: either install latex on your computer at the cost of "clogging up your filesystem" (whatever that means), or give up your freedoms. textlive-most (which is a meta package which includes almost everything an ordinary user need) uses 1.2GBs on Arch Linux, so for sure it's not "couple of GBs". And even if it takes a couple of GBs: I'm using ~60GBs in my root filesystem, and never exp…

And before you say anything about conveniences of SaaSS in collaborative work flow: I'm a professor and I've been writing papers, posters, presentations, books, etc using latex for like 2 decades. I'm pretty sure I used LaTeX more than you, and for serious stuff.

This is going to be anecdotal, and I'm not going to get into details but in one instance, parts of our paper has been leaked before publication by an intern at Google (some of us were using gmail). Since then, we all moved to a private mail server and we're encrypting our correspondences with our collaborators. I know that stuff like this happens rarely, but when it happens, it hurts you.

Aside from principles regarding freedoms, or the creepiness of mass-surveillance, I've already been bit by "cloud" once, so I'm more careful about this than average person. So don't ask me to trust some random dude with a cool startup, or a well-known company with my important data.

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#140

Post by godelski »

akytt wrote: post #90
1wd wrote: post #42

Just don't try anything that isn't in your typical math paper. There are thousands of LaTeX packages, because they are all broken if you use them in a slightly unexpected way, so (reminiscent of JavaScript) a new package is created to "fix" it. Tables? Here you go. Oh, you wanted nested tables? For that you need to switch to an entirely different package. Oh, and that one doesn't support splitting up tables over mult…

It's not that bad. I've been using LaTex for everything for the past five years and never really bump into things I can't do any more. I've learnt that when people really want to do stuff, they fix the packages. Thus, when things do not work, most of people do not really need it. If so, do I? That's not to say the learning curve is not similar to the cliffs of Dover. Because it is. And stackoverflow is your friend. Y…

Same. Definitely not trivial to use, but generally I can get anything I want to get done with a quick google. I'm surprised at the hate on this website. I do a lot more googling for coding. I get if you're doing something exotic in LaTex, but for writing a paper, a presentation, or resume, it is fairly straightforward.

The key to easily writing LaTex is making a few skeletons and then just reusing them.

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