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The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

danielallington.net

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Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#171

Post by dredmorbius »

grecy wrote: post #52
throwaway2016a wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number of times I have changed stuff like gutters, margins, chapter headings, caption fonts and layouts would make that an absolute nightmare. The big publishers don't give you control over that. They give you a template and you have to stick to it. As an author your first and only job is to provide the content (typically). Not everyone knows this but MS Word lets you create formatting blocks that essential beh…

I am self-publishing. > Not everyone knows this but MS Word lets you create formatting blocks that essential behave like CSS classes. Most people have used MS Word Heading, Sub Heading, etc not realizing that as long as you never touch the font formatting options the classes can be changed globally just by applying a different template. Absolutely, but it's going to be a nightmare when all of my 40 chapters are in a…

MS Word supports Master Documents which are largely analogous to LaTeX @include and/or @source statements.

E.g.,

https://techwhirl.com/ms-word-master-documents/

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#172

Post by geezerjay »

moomin wrote: post #115
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LaTeX + git

It would be interesting if someone could write a program that could diff two LaTeX documents and produce a change-tracked version showing insertions and deletions. I think it's doable, but it's a serious project.

Plain old diff does just that.

I'm assuming that what you're actually asking for is a pretty GUI that pretty-prints diff's output.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#173

Post by geezerjay »

pantalaimon wrote: post #86
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…

I must admit that getting text to flow around images has always lead to cascading nightmares for me in LaTeX too.

> getting text to flow around images

In general, either your images are too large when compared to the text column length, or you're trying to force text around an image when it doesn't belong there.

Usually, type-setting principles tend to place figures at the top of the page or in dedicated pages, the later due to its cost-cutting advantages. Somehow, people assume that an indeterminate-size figure can be placed anywhere without it affecting the text's readability

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#174

Post by geezerjay »

anc84 wrote: post #132
Derbasti wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can Word import PDF? How would I keep editable copies of the Math code? I use a similar workflow for PowerPoint slides, where I have dozens of files with a minimal LaTeX template that render math fragments to tiny PDF files, which I can then include in the PowerPoint slides. It's a huge pain. (But less painful than LaTeX beamer).

SVG or MathML are supported by Word and available as export from this tool. There are several online tools to do this as well: https://viereck.ch/latex-to-svg/ , www.tlhiv.org/ltxpreview/ , http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php

> SVG or MathML are supported by Word

Word only added support for SVG since 2016. All prior releases were notorious for their absurd lack of vector graphics support.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#175

Post by geezerjay »

e12e wrote: post #67
ot wrote: post #17

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 thr…

Not sure about math, but dtp packages like framemaker are actually a half-decent alternative to LaTeX. If you really want a word processor - I would recommend abiword over Ms word any day - but I still think you're better off in Lyx - but like all(?) Gui programs, it does seem to be easier to mess up your document (which could probably be fixed editing the underlying LaTeX - but if you're already comfortable doing th…

> Not sure about math, but dtp packages like framemaker are actually a half-decent alternative to LaTeX.

It appears that a license for framemaker costs over $1200 while LaTeX is free.

To command that sort of price, an alternative needs to be far more than a half-decent alternative.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#176

Post by geezerjay »

krupan wrote: post #43

I have spent countless hours fiddling with both LaTeX and Word trying to get them to do what I want. The difference between the two is, once I had figured out how to make LaTeX do what I want, the steps were all documented and reproducible. With Word I had no such record of all the menu items, settings, and button clicks that had given me what I wanted.

> The difference between the two is, once I had figured out how to make LaTeX do what I want, the steps were all documented and reproducible.

I would add that once anyone figures out what they want LaTeX to do, they can simply create their custom document class and use it transparently anywhere they want, and share it with the world.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#177

Post by madez »

geezerjay wrote: post #173
pantalaimon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must admit that getting text to flow around images has always lead to cascading nightmares for me in LaTeX too.

> getting text to flow around images In general, either your images are too large when compared to the text column length, or you're trying to force text around an image when it doesn't belong there. Usually, type-setting principles tend to place figures at the top of the page or in dedicated pages, the later due to its cost-cutting advantages. Somehow, people assume that an indeterminate-size figure can be placed an…

I like having pictures in a text, and exactly where they are referenced. If an image is not necessary for the text, then leave it out, or put it into the annex.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#178

Post by madez »

cavDXF wrote: post #63

One passage made me a bit mad: "[...], but for now it is enough to observe that people who don’t know how to use a particular tool very well are being told to throw that tool away and learn to use an entirely new one on the grounds that it will enable them to do things that they could have done at least as well with the old one – which is (when you think about it) a little peculiar if the aim is really to help people…

I never went to school or university to learn obsolete or unnecessary things.

Math, starting from a certain point, is useless for most people, still it is required to be learnt. Math might be a good tool to measure how good a person can think abstractly, but if it's used for that, then be honest and say so.

I wonder what would change in society if we forced all children to learn an instrument as intensive as we force them to learn math.

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#179

Post by BrandoElFollito »

Incidentally, I saw yesterday a document - part of a thesis (the printer named and spit these pages afterwards).

300 pages in Word, this was really painful to read. It was pure text, with a few quotes. My first thought was it would have been so much easier in LaTeX - both for the author and the readers.

I wrote my thesis in LaTeX and convinced my wife to write hers in LaTeX as well (~1998). This was not because LaTeX is "better" but the fact that it is plain text, so always useable a way or another, not so with Word

Re: The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

#180

Post by BrandoElFollito »

pmoriarty wrote: post #164
JelteF wrote: post #68

I've switched from writing latex to writing pandoc markdown. I then convert it to latex and then to pdf. This gets the same result as latex, but is much easier to type for common stuff like, sections, emphasis and verbatim. It also allows you to type "&" symbols anywhere. When I require "advanced" stuff like tables and figures you can easily fallback to inline latex commands within you're markdown. It really is a sig…

Even when using only LaTeX, I still find the edit/compile/view cycle annoying compared to WYSYWIG. How much of a delay to this cycle does using pandoc add?

When starting with LaTeX I found myself compiling all the time.

I then realized that I cannot do much anyway and ended up writing text all the time and compiling one in a while to admire the work.

With Word I keep adding empty lines, reformatting, etc.

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