51–60 of 90 posts
The reason for LaTeX is the output quality, not the input. Real LaTeX users don't use LaTeX to write documents. whatever -> pandoc -> LaTeX -> perfect document ^ | LaTeX template ----+
Really? That's a bold claim. Got any source or stats for that?
I assure you I am a real LaTeX user and I use LaTeX to write documents. I see everyone around me doing the same.
I still wonder why anyone would create such awful grammar for a programming language. Considering LaTeX's initial release was 40 years ago, there were certainly other programming languages from which to draw inspiration. And I certainly don't believe that LaTeX DSL was the most suitable solution for solving typesetting problems.
The problem with LaTeX was always the lack of underlying proper programming language and data model. The syntax always has been excellent.
> Yes, we are aware of typst. I think it’s cool, but C++ hasn’t replaced C, Rust hasn’t replaced C++, Typst is unlikely to replace LaTeX. Likewise, many are aware of LuaTeX, but, again, the entrenching of a 40-odd year system is not to be underestimated. I am rooting for typst, anyway, and hope it finds its place. Well here's the process I went through in the last few years: I found out about LuaTeX, saw it was suppo…
* Where LaTeX evidently favours doing whatever it takes to achieve a desired result (exhibit 1 being the article we are discussing), Rust itself and the culture that begot it are clearly on the side of decreeing a Right Way from high above and treating the possibility of deviating from it as a bug. In the light of the discussion in Footnote 7, I could for example imagine a Rust-minded typesetting system designer decreeing that unnumbered "displaystyle" math will not be supported.
* Cultural acceptance of mandatory automatic updates means that backwards compatibility may actually be considered an anti-goal.
* Cultural acceptance of ideology/politics in software engineering brings the danger of invasive conditions. What if, by way of an aggressively interpreted CoC, {receiving funding from military/police-aligned agencies, working with Russian collaborators, working with Iranian collaborators} becomes grounds for being excluded from issue discussions or package repositories? (I do take note that Typst does not currently show signs of doing anything like this, but the tone of the wider Rust community does have to be taken into account.)
Of course all these concerns are speculative, but scientific papers can be a nightmare scenario of maintenance (half a year's worth of work, one-digit number of people in the world qualified to write, two-digit number of people who will bother to read). Under those constraints, some measure of paranoia feels appropriate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The author is a PhD student that has been using LaTeX heavily for 10 years. But what should a new student use, and why? When the only reason to choose LaTeX is old colleagues and gatekeeping publishers, I know it's a matter of time. Sadly its more than that. Will we be able to compile a typst file made today in 10 years? I have to do that regularly with latex. Will everybody one collaborates with also use typst? Ve…
I regularly can't do that in LaTeX due to changes in packages. Yeah, the core is stable, but dependencies are still an issue in TeX land.
I've never had a problem recompiling documents. Yeah, you might have a problem if you're using LaTeX for a fringe use but most people don't.
The reason for LaTeX is the output quality, not the input. Real LaTeX users don't use LaTeX to write documents. whatever -> pandoc -> LaTeX -> perfect document ^ | LaTeX template ----+
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the things that need to be written in LaTeX (math) cannot be written in any other language yet.
There are lots of applications that can be used to write math that is converted into LaTeX equations. You can also use MathML -> Latex The equation subset is the best part of LaTeX syntax and so many people learn it. It's very compact compared to alternatives.
I was initially suprised to see that the typst devs chose to go with their own syntax, but I'm now very happy they did.
> Yes, we are aware of typst. I think it’s cool, but C++ hasn’t replaced C, Rust hasn’t replaced C++, Typst is unlikely to replace LaTeX. Likewise, many are aware of LuaTeX, but, again, the entrenching of a 40-odd year system is not to be underestimated. I am rooting for typst, anyway, and hope it finds its place. Well here's the process I went through in the last few years: I found out about LuaTeX, saw it was suppo…
Typst does look very nice based on the brief look I took at it, but besides the questions of adoption and entrenchment that have been raised in parallel comments, the choice of Rust as the implementation language is also concerning to me. I think that Rust and the community that surrounds it are associated with a newer, simultaneously somewhat trend-chasing and decidedly paternalistic culture of software engineering…
And it's also laughable to claim that any research paper written in LaTeX is "maintained". It's a one-off job. Nobody is reusing their previous papers as submodules in new ones.
The reason for LaTeX is the output quality, not the input. Real LaTeX users don't use LaTeX to write documents. whatever -> pandoc -> LaTeX -> perfect document ^ | LaTeX template ----+
> It’s weird I even have to say this, but don’t stalk me and email me at my personal address. I am not sure of what happened, and it must have been unpleasant, but someone going up on your website hierarchy, they reach https://commutative.xyz/~miguelmurca/ , they click the only link, and you personally list your profiles there, including email, github and insta. It is OK if someone contacts you for whatever reason on…
Hey, hope you enjoyed the article itself. I'm sorry if you felt that addendum was aggressive. However, I still feel like I'm justified in making it absolutely clear how (and if) I want to be contacted. I am in a complicated position where I'm speaking to a niche -- not an imaginary niche, by any means -- but actually addressing every reader. In the face of this, my option was to clearly state my boundaries, regardles…
> I list an email address at the end of every article, for the purposes of discussing the content of the article.
I am maybe blind, or because of adblockers, or because of cloudflare, but they don't show up for me, in edge, and in firefox.
You definitely should make it easy for the people to contact you in your preferred way. Put it under the articles, under the blog home page https://commutative.xyz/~miguelmurca/blog/ , and maybe under your HN about section.
My previous message was under the impression that you don't put a contact info in this blog, and I tried to demonstrate that getting messages at your other contact is your fault, not the public's fault or "HN reader"'s fault. (I wonder if
But, 1. famously, HN can be quite predictable in some of their responses (by what I expect is, essentially, a meme effect), and 2. I’ve had some unexpected experiences resulting from previously reaching FP in HN.
I still wonder why anyone would create such awful grammar for a programming language. Considering LaTeX's initial release was 40 years ago, there were certainly other programming languages from which to draw inspiration. And I certainly don't believe that LaTeX DSL was the most suitable solution for solving typesetting problems.
LaTeX grammar is actually very good to type and quite powerful and compact. It's not a programming grammar, it's a markup language. The problem with LaTeX was always the lack of underlying proper programming language and data model. The syntax always has been excellent.
LaTeX is powerful and I use it every day, but let's not pretend it's got qualities it doesn't.