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The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

danielallington.net

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Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#151

Post by dmitriid »

cbcoutinho wrote: post #144
dmitriid wrote: post #103

LaTeX is only good for one thing, and one thing only: create same-looking two-column PDFs for research/scholarly publications. And it's barely good at that. Things may have changed slightly since I last used it (cca 2008), but: combining several languages in one document (Turkish + Russian, anyone?), tables that properly span several pages, inline images, a different layout (that doesn't break languages, or tables, o…

You've got a pretty unique use-case. What's an alternative you would recommend for this kind of work?

There's nothing really unique for that document. It's just an outline of a document for an international company.

We also tried to use latex to generate price reports, and that's where we ran into Russian + Turkish issue :)

For simple documents like the one at the link, I'd go with Word/Pages. For generating pdfs though... I still have no idea :)

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#152

Post by Turing_Machine »

taeric wrote: post #50
obastani wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, sometimes simple formatting in Latex can be a nightmare, for example, getting your table columns spaced correctly.

Tables amuse me. I honestly think they are easier in raw TeX. Though, they are a pain in all languages, sometimes. Word, TeX, HTML, I don't think anyone has ever succeeded at the perfect table.

Yes, tables appear to be a Hard Problem.

Conceptually, there's not much to them -- a grid with one item in each grid square. How hard could it be?

Yet somehow, coming up with a system that produces nice-looking tables while using syntax that doesn't make you gouge your eyes out seems to be very difficult.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#153

Post by Turing_Machine »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #44
grecy wrote: post #24

I am currently writing my first print book, and honestly feel that LaTeX is the best solution. I want precise control over a 250+ page book. I have never seen a WYSIWYG editor that doesn't make that a royal PITA. Different gutters on left and right pages, chapters always starting on a right hand page, consistent and great justification, fine control over how chapter headings appear (and quick to update) etc. etc. On…

XSL-FO provides a similar level of format control without the headaches of a hard to debug language and fossilized macros. You can use Docbook as the launching point for the final translation to XSL-FO and use any number of human friendly markup languages (ReST, Markdown, etc.) that can be converted to Docbook. Other output formats like ePub also become easy to generate with a Docbook intermediate.

Unfortunately, XSL-FO is more or less abandonware at this point, with future development focused on CSS Paged Media.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#154

Post by Asooka »

spacelizard wrote: post #56
ucaetano wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that Google Docs actually handles all of those.

It does, but it has a lot of the same problems as MS Office, some worse. The scripting/macro system is arcane, proprietary, and only works in the cloud. The files aren't in an easily parseable format. You can export them to OOXML/ODF, but then you're stuck with parsing some ridiculously complex markup. As far as I know the version history is not exportable either.

Also, once I wanted to write some light math equations in a google doc and went hunting for plugins that provide just a bit of TeX-like math functionality. I did find something called "Auto LaTeX Equations", but it didn't really work all that well. It did let me typeset equations, but they came out very pixellated for some reason. I also found "gMath", but couldn't persuade it to render any equations.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#155

Post by axelf4 »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #89
moomin wrote: post #71

So, to demonstrate how bad LaTeX is, he picks the single most markup heavy thing you do (barring tables) and compares it to plain text? Plain text, I'll point out, that doesn't format the same way. In practice, there _are_ a bunch of extra steps to get this working in Word, they're just not easy to express in a text document. Then he goes on to show the example of trying to find a spelling error. Ignoring that this j…

> work with multiple people or track the history of a document I often proofread for my friends. I tell them that they must use Track Changes in Word. Is there a better tool that you recommend?

Being a text format means that you can use version control effectively. Latexdiff can generate diffs between versions. Wouldn't call it better, just different.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#156

Post by hzhou321 »

The 2gig TeXLive installation is quite an elephant. I often wish that I could just pick what I really needed; but that requires me to understand the dependency of those packages and suspect the end solution may point to re-engineer the whole thing. Yesterday I independently had this resolution that I shall experiment using plain TeX + my own meta-layer macros and see how far I could go.

The font installation and selection is something I wish to have a GUI interface as simple as a word drop-down. Maybe I should find/or make such simple tool (ideally it should load the .tex file and provide WYSIWYG interface).

The edit-compile-debug cycle is the simple way of dealing with complexity. The text form (markup or code) decomposes the complexity into abstract parts that we can focus on one part a time and the feedback loop provides a progressive path to perfection. I believe at some point, programming skill should be as common just as literacy today, at which point this edit-compile-debug cycle will be accepted just as we learn to accept a book without pictures.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#157

Post by moomin »

panglott wrote: post #140
moomin wrote: post #71

So, to demonstrate how bad LaTeX is, he picks the single most markup heavy thing you do (barring tables) and compares it to plain text? Plain text, I'll point out, that doesn't format the same way. In practice, there _are_ a bunch of extra steps to get this working in Word, they're just not easy to express in a text document. Then he goes on to show the example of trying to find a spelling error. Ignoring that this j…

To demonstrate what a barrier LaTeX is, he illustrates by writing the title of a paper, the author, date, and first line. The result is obviously human-readable in a word processer without special training, but not in LaTeX.

Show me the person who can't answer the question "Who was the author of the paper?" by reading the LaTeX version and I'll concede you have a point.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#159

Post by panglott »

moomin wrote: post #157
panglott wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To demonstrate what a barrier LaTeX is, he illustrates by writing the title of a paper, the author, date, and first line. The result is obviously human-readable in a word processer without special training, but not in LaTeX.

Show me the person who can't answer the question "Who was the author of the paper?" by reading the LaTeX version and I'll concede you have a point.

The person first has to realize that it is an actual paper that they are supposed to be reading, instead of some kind of mangled file.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#160

Post by ucaetano »

Derbasti wrote: post #61
ucaetano wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that Google Docs actually handles all of those.

How would Google Docs update a graph in a document from an external graphics file? All my graphs and tables are generated in some programming environment, and updated frequently. In Word, I would have to right-click every single graph, select new source file, adapt graph size... Could Google Docs do this?

Don't know about external files, but it can update charts from sheets, and you can also write a script that does it automatically, both on word and gdocs.
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