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Neovim

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Re: Neovim

#231

Post by _cipher_ »

tinco wrote: post #29

Thanks for trying to do what many of us secretly wished we could do but can't because of time/skill constraints. I will definitely move to NeoVim the second it's packaged (is it yet?), regardless if you've changed anything yet. I hate the ideas many programmers have about backwards compatibility, that it's more important than development speed and modern concepts. There is nothing holy about Unix era software, chance…

> We as developers in the Open Source community should be ashamed people are still using Vim to write LaTeX in Bash running on terminal emulators.

I agree. Bash sucks. ;)

Re: Neovim

#232

Post by microtonal »

mbreese wrote: post #209
banachtarski wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an apples to oranges comparison. I want to draw a conformal mapping diagram in word and also write a 3-vector of the navier-stokes equations. Also, I want to do a lot of tensor arithmetic with tons of superscripts and subscripts and arrows. Tell me how any of this is accomplished in Word please. Saying Word is easier to us is like saying BASIC is easier than C++.

You know what most people would do? Use a dedicated program to create the plots and equations, export it as a PDF, and embed that in Word. Instead of LaTeX being the de facto standard for all publishing, it is relegated to very specialized uses in mathematics and some engineering. If you try to use LaTeX with a biomedical researcher, they will look at you very funny. Hell, I just had a postdoc send me figures as part…

You know what most people would do? Use a dedicated program to create the plots and equations, export it as a PDF, and embed that in Word.

I am not fond of LaTeX. However, for some fields there are simply no dedicated programs, while there are good LaTeX packages. For instance, for my thesis I drew a lot of attribute-value matrices (in the unification grammar/HPSG sense). There is a great packages to draw these structures, both flat and in tree form.

I had some hope that DocBook et al. could replace LaTeX for most uses. It's great in many respects: it's just XML, so easy to machine-interpret. Customising output is easy (via XSL stylesheets). There is good support for producing PDFs (via XSL-FO). And it supports SVG and MathML. There are also great WYSIWYG editors, such as Oxygen. However, that toolchain never became popular, because most people hate XML.

The book that we never got to finish[1] is written in DocBook, equations are in MathML. The Slackware book that I once wrote [2] is also completely done in DocBook.

[1] http://nlpwp.org/

[2] http://rlworkman.net/howtos/slackbasics.pdf

Re: Neovim

#233

Post by microtonal »

kcbanner wrote: post #215
unfamiliar wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh get over yourself. Every one of the criticisms he levelled against latex is spot on, and you pick up on the fact that he mentions Word is easier to use (which, by a long, long way, it it).

I hardly think so. Let's address them: > "LateX is slow, inconsistent and needs to be ran multiple times to give a correct result" It is not slow, it runs in under a second on most documents I have authored. > "Inconsistent" I'm not sure what tinco meant by this, but it does in fact return the same results for the same file across multiple runs. > "Needs to be run multiple times to give the correct result" This is tr…

It is not slow, it runs in under a second on most documents I have authored.

It is slow. On my PhD thesis, it took more than one minute at some point, on an SSD. Not very convenient if you are tweaking figures and equations, and want to preview a change quickly.

Re: Neovim

#234

Post by microtonal »

yen223 wrote: post #202
ori_b wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm trash talking it because it's the most popular way of working. I don't know anyone that does not write his/her papers in LaTex. And you never stopped to investigate why, in spite of the far greater ease of entry that alternatives have?

I have a hard time believing this, to be honest. I know far, far more people who use Microsoft Word, than I do people who use (or even heard of) LaTeX.

It depends on the field. The field I am working in (computational linguistics), virtually everyone uses LaTeX. And with good reason, there are great packages for typesetting stuff that is specific to our field. So, yes, at work I know far more people who use LaTeX than Word.

Re: Neovim

#235

Post by pjmlp »

tinco wrote: post #29

Thanks for trying to do what many of us secretly wished we could do but can't because of time/skill constraints. I will definitely move to NeoVim the second it's packaged (is it yet?), regardless if you've changed anything yet. I hate the ideas many programmers have about backwards compatibility, that it's more important than development speed and modern concepts. There is nothing holy about Unix era software, chance…

I fully agree.

For me, Vi and Emacs are only when I don't have an option in terms of IDE support, even though I know at least Emacs quite well.

What can I say, the world of Amiga GUIs, Smalltalk and Lisp environments spoiled me as an IDE fanboy.

It baffles me why in 2014, some developers still prefer to work as if UNIX System V had just been released.

Re: Neovim

#236

Post by pjmlp »

microtonal wrote: post #232
mbreese wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what most people would do? Use a dedicated program to create the plots and equations, export it as a PDF, and embed that in Word. Instead of LaTeX being the de facto standard for all publishing, it is relegated to very specialized uses in mathematics and some engineering. If you try to use LaTeX with a biomedical researcher, they will look at you very funny. Hell, I just had a postdoc send me figures as part…

You know what most people would do? Use a dedicated program to create the plots and equations, export it as a PDF, and embed that in Word. I am not fond of LaTeX. However, for some fields there are simply no dedicated programs, while there are good LaTeX packages. For instance, for my thesis I drew a lot of attribute-value matrices (in the unification grammar/HPSG sense). There is a great packages to draw these struc…

Docbook and DITA are used a lot in the enterprise world.

Re: Neovim

#237

Post by Too »

tinco wrote: post #35
fournm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with almost everything--except for backwards compatibility when it comes to throwing stuff out. There is definite value in it, especially when we're talking about something as old and widely used as vim! The thing about compatibility is that it doesn't matter how great your new and shiny is if it can't talk to old things at all. Imagine the best new text editor in the world, but it's completely incompatible w…

I agree with almost everything--except for backwards compatibility when it comes to throwing stuff out. There is definite value in it, especially when we're talking about something as old and widely used as vim! This is the part where people are surprised, but I am an extremist. I definitely think backwards compatibility should be among the lowest priorities when making decisions on improving software, especially and…

Large scale proof why this is a bad idea: Python 2.x vs Python 3

Those of you who don't know about this mess, it shouldn't be hard to find some rants by googling. Basically Python 3 broke backwards compatibility with python 2 without providing any compatibility layer at all, they just expected every third party library to switch "sooner or later". It's now 10 years down the road and nothing has really happened. Everybody who gets shit done is still using 2.x because they need the old libraries.

Re: Neovim

#238

Post by noir_lord »

glesica wrote: post #185
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one example, just off the top of my head, most any remotely technically-inclined young person in 2014 knows that you use Ctrl-Z/X/C/V/A to undo, cut, copy, paste, and select all. (Or substitute Command if you're on a Mac--same basic idea.) They've got that down cold, along with a host of other ubiquitous editing conventions--Ctrl-Left/Right to jump words, Shift-arrowkeys to highlight, Home/End to jump to the begi…

Unix was here before all those conventions you listed. So go back in time and tell Windows and Mac software vendors to stop making everyone change their muscle memory in order to use some new software... But seriously, this is a complaint I hear from undergrads in CS all the time. My answer is the same every single time: stop whining and get over it. You're a professional now, you use professional tools and sometimes…

They might "whine" if you used the steering wheel on the 18 wheeler to control acceleration and the left and right pedals to steer though...

Re: Neovim

#239

Post by tiziano88 »

sandGorgon wrote: post #208

kickstarter this please. I (and so many others I guess) would love to support this. I'm worried that a lot of good projects die off because everyone have mouths to feed. I suspect that I have spent a large part of my adult life using vim, so I want to make sure a good successor comes through. Take a look at LightTable - which was quite successful [1] in raising and delivering what it promised. [1] https://www.kicksta…

Have you seen this: https://www.bountysource.com/fundraisers/539-neovim-first-it... ?

Re: Neovim

#240

Post by dmytrish »

pjmlp wrote: post #235
tinco wrote: post #29

Thanks for trying to do what many of us secretly wished we could do but can't because of time/skill constraints. I will definitely move to NeoVim the second it's packaged (is it yet?), regardless if you've changed anything yet. I hate the ideas many programmers have about backwards compatibility, that it's more important than development speed and modern concepts. There is nothing holy about Unix era software, chance…

I fully agree. For me, Vi and Emacs are only when I don't have an option in terms of IDE support, even though I know at least Emacs quite well. What can I say, the world of Amiga GUIs, Smalltalk and Lisp environments spoiled me as an IDE fanboy. It baffles me why in 2014, some developers still prefer to work as if UNIX System V had just been released.

What features does an IDE give you?
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