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Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX

blog.jez.io

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Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX

#71

Post by delhanty »

kerkeslager wrote: post #49
jez wrote: post #26

Author here! I'd like to take a second to point out that the audience I had in mind when writing this article was mostly my fellow classmates in college. In school we were hastily introduced to LaTeX freshman year and were required to typeset our homeworks before submission. The point of the article isn't "you should never use LaTeX" but rather "hey, there's this other, simpler tool that you might like better!" plus…

I'd also add that while Markdown and LaTeX can do some of the same things, they're designed toward very different tasks. I've used both numerous times in my career, and I can't remember a case where it's been ambiguous which tool was more appropriate for the task. If it's going to be printed, you probably want LaTeX. If it's going to be rendered to a screen, you probably want Markdown. If it's going to be rendered to…

(In addition / As an alternative) to Pandoc, has anyone tried Bookish [0] by Terrence Parr of ANTLR fame?

It was referenced by Jeremy Howard in a HN comment [1] on the submission for their "Matrix Calculus for Deep Learning " HN submission of 18 days ago [2]:

>Jeremy here. Here to answer any questions or comments that you have. > >But more importantly - I need to mention that Terence Parr did nearly all the work on this. He shared my passion for making something that anyone could read on any device to such an extent that he ended up creating a new tool for generating fast, mobile-friendly math-heavy texts: https://github.com/parrt/bookish . (We tried Katex, Mathjax, and pretty much everything else but nothing rendered everything properly). > >I've never found anything that introduces the necessary matrix calculus for deep learning clearly, correctly, and accessibly - so I'm happy that this now exists.

[0] https://github.com/parrt/bookish

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16267593

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16267178

Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX

#72

Post by isatty »

jez wrote: post #26

Author here! I'd like to take a second to point out that the audience I had in mind when writing this article was mostly my fellow classmates in college. In school we were hastily introduced to LaTeX freshman year and were required to typeset our homeworks before submission. The point of the article isn't "you should never use LaTeX" but rather "hey, there's this other, simpler tool that you might like better!" plus…

When I was in uni I used Latex to format work that had math and needed better organization (theses, publication papers). For simpler stuff like comp sci assignments I did it in markdown and ran it through pandoc.

Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX

#73

Post by mwcampbell »

kerkeslager wrote: post #49
jez wrote: post #26

Author here! I'd like to take a second to point out that the audience I had in mind when writing this article was mostly my fellow classmates in college. In school we were hastily introduced to LaTeX freshman year and were required to typeset our homeworks before submission. The point of the article isn't "you should never use LaTeX" but rather "hey, there's this other, simpler tool that you might like better!" plus…

I'd also add that while Markdown and LaTeX can do some of the same things, they're designed toward very different tasks. I've used both numerous times in my career, and I can't remember a case where it's been ambiguous which tool was more appropriate for the task. If it's going to be printed, you probably want LaTeX. If it's going to be rendered to a screen, you probably want Markdown. If it's going to be rendered to…

Why is LaTeX unambiguously better for print? Is it just the support for math notation, or is there more to it?

And since "print" very often means a PDF that's also available online, has there been any progress on tagged PDF support in pdflatex or a similar tool? This is important for accessibility.

Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX

#74

Post by isatty »

da_chicken wrote: post #20
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #7

Markdown can do quite a lot, but it doesn't have any way to write mathematical formulae. Since that's 90% of why I use LaTeX in most cases it seems silly to recommend Markdown. LaTeX has a superset of features, and is well suited to what it does properly (typesetting). Markdown is quick and easy to use, so it's good for blog posts.

My problem with LaTeX is that a ton of programmers think it's a good idea to use LaTeX instead of, say, Word or Writer or plain text wrapped at 80 characters or a Wiki for things like process or project documentation. Programmers love to use LaTeX, because they get to feel like they're doing something exciting like writing a computer program when what they're actually doing something incredibly boring like writing do…

I'm sorry I disagree. Word is absolutely horrible for programmers to write in. It makes even the simplest of formatting repetitive and boring. It does not do automatic layout (things I DO NOT want to bother myself with) nor syntax highlighting.

Just use Markdown if you're so concerned with people writing Latex.

Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX

#75

Post by eslaught »

mwcampbell wrote: post #73
kerkeslager wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also add that while Markdown and LaTeX can do some of the same things, they're designed toward very different tasks. I've used both numerous times in my career, and I can't remember a case where it's been ambiguous which tool was more appropriate for the task. If it's going to be printed, you probably want LaTeX. If it's going to be rendered to a screen, you probably want Markdown. If it's going to be rendered to…

Why is LaTeX unambiguously better for print? Is it just the support for math notation, or is there more to it? And since "print" very often means a PDF that's also available online, has there been any progress on tagged PDF support in pdflatex or a similar tool? This is important for accessibility.

Have you ever tried to typeset a complex document with side bars, figures, multi-part figures, figures that contain math (not just images), and layouts that take a lot of tweaking to get just right?

I can imagine doing that in Pandoc Markdown, but only with extensive use of raw LaTeX code. Most of the above doesn't have a direct equivalent even in richer Markdown dialects like Pandoc.

Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX

#76

Post by mwcampbell »

eslaught wrote: post #75
mwcampbell wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is LaTeX unambiguously better for print? Is it just the support for math notation, or is there more to it? And since "print" very often means a PDF that's also available online, has there been any progress on tagged PDF support in pdflatex or a similar tool? This is important for accessibility.

Have you ever tried to typeset a complex document with side bars, figures, multi-part figures, figures that contain math (not just images), and layouts that take a lot of tweaking to get just right? I can imagine doing that in Pandoc Markdown, but only with extensive use of raw LaTeX code. Most of the above doesn't have a direct equivalent even in richer Markdown dialects like Pandoc.

Ah, thanks for educating me. I pity anyone who has to work within the constraints of print in 2018. To me, hypertext that adapts to the user's device and needs (e.g. rendering at a different font size and reflowing appropriately, or rendering through non-visual means like speech and braille) is the only way to go these days.

Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX

#77

Post by Gracana »

mwcampbell wrote: post #76
eslaught wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever tried to typeset a complex document with side bars, figures, multi-part figures, figures that contain math (not just images), and layouts that take a lot of tweaking to get just right? I can imagine doing that in Pandoc Markdown, but only with extensive use of raw LaTeX code. Most of the above doesn't have a direct equivalent even in richer Markdown dialects like Pandoc.

Ah, thanks for educating me. I pity anyone who has to work within the constraints of print in 2018. To me, hypertext that adapts to the user's device and needs (e.g. rendering at a different font size and reflowing appropriately, or rendering through non-visual means like speech and braille) is the only way to go these days.

To be fair to latex, the majority of hypertext examples don't do any of those things either.

Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX

#78

Post by ryandrake »

jacobolus wrote: post #69
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my field there are always templates. LaTeX, or I guess TeX, works well until it doesn’t, and then fails in ugly ways (quite the opposite of Word, which will work all the time not very well). So overflow and underflow paragraphs are possible, so are orphans, though it tries to avoid them if the output is decent. This is nice because I can fix all my problems usually by refining my content (changing words, orders, e…

Web essays is definitely not the place to use professional typesetting tools. Browsers are simply incapable of doing professional quality typesetting of the type books have had since the 15th century because the output environment is too heterogeneous, unless you abandon html and render documents as SVG or PDF or something (I would not recommend doing that). Authoring tools won’t help you. On the web the best you can…

I've always been curious: Pretend I'm totally ignorant, and have no idea what need a typesetting tool fulfills. Someone who has used and been happy with Word / Open Office for years to write documents. What does LaTeX/InDesign solve for me, besides "nice looking math" that I'm not getting out of basic word processors? How do I know which one I need? I honestly have no clue. If I were to start writing a book tomorrow, I'd just open Word. Why not? What am I getting when I invest either the time to learn LaTeX or the money to buy InDesign?

Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX

#79

Post by davesque »

jez wrote: post #26

Author here! I'd like to take a second to point out that the audience I had in mind when writing this article was mostly my fellow classmates in college. In school we were hastily introduced to LaTeX freshman year and were required to typeset our homeworks before submission. The point of the article isn't "you should never use LaTeX" but rather "hey, there's this other, simpler tool that you might like better!" plus…

I'm a bit confused by this. As I see it, LaTeX can do everything that Markdown can before things get complicated. Where LaTeX does get complicated (e.g. when designing figures or drawings), Markdown doesn't offer any advantage or even any functionality. For composing simple documents or outlines and doing typesetting of equations, LaTeX has some boilerplate but it's really not that much.

Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX

#80

Post by mixmastamyk »

xigency wrote: post #53
mixmastamyk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was with you until your recommendation for Word for documentation. Something like a wiki or Sphinx would be much more appropriate than a flawed and proprietary one.

The proper tool is whatever the IT department has installed on everyone's computer by default, and failing that, something simple and easily edited (like raw text or markdown). I think the proper analogy is like editing documentation in PDF. Software that can edit PDFs is expensive and difficult to use, like LaTeX can be (difficult, not expensive, just in terms of time).

Yes, though neither a wiki or text editor need to be installed, therefore even more accessible.
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