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TinyTeX: A lightweight and easy-to-maintain LaTeX distribution

yihui.name

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Re: TinyTeX: A lightweight and easy-to-maintain LaTeX distribution

#41

Post by MereInterest »

craigsmansion wrote: post #15

TeX people are unsung heroes to me and about as close to magic as software can get. It's like an ancient secret order that is keeping the world safe from word-processors. I have no idea of what they do, or how they do it, but I can't argue with the world-class results.

As with most things, it is largely a matter of practice and experience. There was a time when I was fast enough to take lecture notes in LaTeX, in courses where there were many formulas to be typeset. I did get an odd look from a professor one time, where at the end of a one-hour open-everything exam, I turned in a typeset pdf rather than handwritten answers.

Sadly, I am not as proficient with it as I used to be, as it has way too much esoterica in getting the exact layouts you want.

Re: TinyTeX: A lightweight and easy-to-maintain LaTeX distribution

#43

Post by xvilka »

craigsmansion wrote: post #15

TeX people are unsung heroes to me and about as close to magic as software can get. It's like an ancient secret order that is keeping the world safe from word-processors. I have no idea of what they do, or how they do it, but I can't argue with the world-class results.

The biggest problem that most of the publishers still do not accept LaTeX submissions. Especially if you want to publish a book.

Re: TinyTeX: A lightweight and easy-to-maintain LaTeX distribution

#45

Post by romwell »

xvilka wrote: post #43
craigsmansion wrote: post #15

TeX people are unsung heroes to me and about as close to magic as software can get. It's like an ancient secret order that is keeping the world safe from word-processors. I have no idea of what they do, or how they do it, but I can't argue with the world-class results.

The biggest problem that most of the publishers still do not accept LaTeX submissions. Especially if you want to publish a book.

Hello from the world of math! Very sorry to hear about your sufferings.

Re: TinyTeX: A lightweight and easy-to-maintain LaTeX distribution

#46

Post by mohammedbin »

graycat wrote: post #24

For 10+ years I've been a big fan of D. Knuth's TeX with Knuth's original macros Plain. I have about 70 TeX macros of my own. That setup is for all my higher quality word processing from ordinary letters to mathematics, and I regard it as fine. For that word processing, that setup is fine, a done deal. I looked at LaTeX, got the basic books, etc. and concluded that (A) Knuth's documentation in The TeXBook is relative…

As someone who prefers TeX- i'd say the comparison goes this way(very roughly)-

TeX:

* Assembly language or C of typesetting. Gives you fine control * useful when you have various differrnt formats and don't want to learn a new latex template for everything.

LaTex:

* Java of typesetting * Amazing set of libraries and very useful if you work on relatively few well defined formats.

Re: TinyTeX: A lightweight and easy-to-maintain LaTeX distribution

#47

Post by mohammedbin »

purplezooey wrote: post #28

The other day I saw a resume written in LaTeX. Sorry, that's the height of pretension.

I didn't downvote - there is a substantial number of pretenders in this space. Because latex is surprisingly easy to use. But I keep my resume in the same family of software myself and it's because of ease of editing. I hide the Computer Modern font and use popular Microsoft Office fonts. So nobody knows.

Re: TinyTeX: A lightweight and easy-to-maintain LaTeX distribution

#48

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #33
bscphil wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, in the sense that this comes years too late for me and I would guess most other Linux users. It's easy enough on Linux just to install effectively all of the packages from your package manager, and the couple GBs it takes aren't enough to be a real concern (and I've got my root on an SSD!). However, I can see this being a real benefit to Windows and OSX users, who don't have a native package manager. If you'…

TeX on Mac is nearly as painless as TeX on linux: you just install MacTeX via your preferred software installation method (I use homebrew, but in the past I've downloaded the 5GB dmg and used that), install it and everything pretty much "Just Works"

I haven't used it in a long time, but MikTeX on Windows was really easy too back in the 2000s.

Re: TinyTeX: A lightweight and easy-to-maintain LaTeX distribution

#49

Post by kylebarron »

Tarq0n wrote: post #14

Yihui Xie has been an incredible boon for the R & Pandoc ecosystems. Turning your R code into pdf or html is so easy I'm surprised language authors aren't scrambling to copy the feature.

It's because other languages like Python and Julia would usually just use something like Jupyter Notebooks, and those can be converted to PDF using nbconvert.

Re: TinyTeX: A lightweight and easy-to-maintain LaTeX distribution

#50

Post by FredFS456 »

pletnes wrote: post #11

In my experience, TeX needs some packaging/distribution love. Also in my experience, overleaf/sharelatex (web based) blows all of the local installation approaches out of the water. Especially with respect to collaboration with coauthors of your documents.

Sharelatex merged with (was bought by?) Overleaf a while ago. Now we're just down to using Overleaf v2.
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