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The LaTeX cargo cult

joshparsons.net

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Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#71

Post by Agathos »

pavanred wrote: post #67
mhandley wrote: post #21

The biggest advantage of latex is that by (mostly) separating content from presentation, you can use revision control systems like git or svn to collaborate on papers. You can be in that final hour before the paper submission deadline, on a skype call with four authors scattered around the world, all simultaneously editing the paper (each using whatever tools they prefer), and be reasonably confident it won't all end…

I agree with this, my thesis committee wanted my thesis as a research paper (irrespective of whether my work was going to be published or not) but in the final stages the graduate college declined to approve it in spite of my committee's approval because they require a predefined format of the thesis. The change of format took me a few minutes, thanks to latex. I can't begin to imagine how much work and anxiety it wo…

My school publishes a LaTeX template for theses. After I downloaded that, I spent very little time thinking about formatting.

Unfortunately my advisor doesn't do LaTeX so it kind of sucked for collaboration.

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#72

Post by tincholio »

lmm wrote: post #68
mhandley wrote: post #21

The biggest advantage of latex is that by (mostly) separating content from presentation, you can use revision control systems like git or svn to collaborate on papers. You can be in that final hour before the paper submission deadline, on a skype call with four authors scattered around the world, all simultaneously editing the paper (each using whatever tools they prefer), and be reasonably confident it won't all end…

I always see this claim that latex separates content from presentation, but I don't see how it's true. As the article says, \emph{hello} is implemented in terms of font commands; it entangles the semantics (emphasis) and the presentation (italicisation), and there is no way to extract the semantics of a latex document and render it in a different format the way you can with e.g. Markdown.

\emph does not always render as italics, it actually depends on the document class you're using, and you're free to redefine it as you see fit. It just indicates that the argument should be emphasized, not how.

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#75

Post by lmm »

revelation wrote: post #31
chimeracoder wrote: post #11

> LaTeX input files are a proprietary format. This is a really misleading statement, especially since it comes after him stating that "LaTeX is free in both senses". LaTeX input files apparently lack a standard specification, which is admittedly bad, but then again, so do the input files of many programming languages that some people on HN are writing on a daily basis[0]. This is not the same thing as them being prop…

By his definition, every document ever written in any DSL is in a propietary format . Personally, I'm perfectly happy if I can open a document in a text editor and get the content that way. That obviously works perfectly fine with LaTeX, it doesn't work at all with doc.

> By his definition, every document ever written in any DSL is in a propietary format.

I think that's basically true. The good formats are formats that have a) a standard but more importantly b) multiple independent implementations.

> Personally, I'm perfectly happy if I can open a document in a text editor and get the content that way. That obviously works perfectly fine with LaTeX, it doesn't work at all with doc.

You can get the content, but not the formatting, which was presumably important if you were using latex. It's pretty trivial to extract the plain text from a word doc too.

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#76

Post by sktrdie »

I understand some of the negative things about LaTeX but it generates outstanding documents that no other processing system can match so far. Specifically the typography:

http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/showcase-of-beau...

http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/85904/showcase-of-bea...

Also the graphs are outstanding:

http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/158668/nice-scientifi...

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#77

Post by jessriedel »

mangecoeur wrote: post #26

LaTeX is a good idea with a terrible implementation. The popularity of markdown (+variants) is a testament to the usefulness of plain text writing. However, LaTeX syntax is a clunky and the ecosystem is a scrapheap-challenge amalgamation of packages with assorted cross-incompatibilities. Latex to PDF converters are also shockingly slow for this day and age, a simple document can take several seconds to compile compar…

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the single most effective use of ~$1 million for advancing math and physics research (two disciples for which no non-LaTeX solutions exist) would be to hire some developers for a couple of years and make an enterprise-quality successor to TeX. Keep the math syntax, make it handle infinite pages for the Web, and fix all the awful bits that waste hundreds of thousands of grad-student-man-hours each year.

This isn't fantasy. Zotero is evidence that custom built academic software funded by charitable foundations can be a tremendously positive service to the academic community.

https://www.zotero.org/about/

Also, everyone should read deong's comment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8511509

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#78

Post by Leszek »

graycat wrote: post #66
andreasvc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are latex to HTML converters and they only work for a subset of latex functionality. It is not as simple as defining a driver that outputs HTML. Latex and HTML work in fundamentally different ways: latex typesets for a fixed paper size, and specifies its coordinates in physical dimensions. HTML is free flowing; if the user resizes the window the layout should adapt, they layout has to work on mobile devices, et…

Let me be more clear: Long ago a friend kept suggesting that I write a converter from TeX (maybe also LaTeX) to HTML. I kept telling him that that was essentially impossible because TeX is a programming language, likely Turing machine equivalent, complete with if-then-else, allocate-free, file read-write, while HTML is just a text markup language. No doubt JavaScript is Turning machine equivalent, but I'd have a toug…

The point isn't to convert a TeX program into an equivalent HTML program, it's to be HTML an output of a TeX program. For example, make \emph{foo} output "foo" instead of "/Times-Italic 12 selectfont (foo) show" or whatever the PS output would be.

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#79

Post by [deleted] »

sktrdie wrote: post #76

I understand some of the negative things about LaTeX but it generates outstanding documents that no other processing system can match so far. Specifically the typography: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/showcase-of-beau... http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/85904/showcase-of-bea... Also the graphs are outstanding: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/158668/nice-scientifi...

[deleted]

Re: The LaTeX cargo cult

#80

Post by Derbasti »

deong wrote: post #59
mangecoeur wrote: post #26

LaTeX is a good idea with a terrible implementation. The popularity of markdown (+variants) is a testament to the usefulness of plain text writing. However, LaTeX syntax is a clunky and the ecosystem is a scrapheap-challenge amalgamation of packages with assorted cross-incompatibilities. Latex to PDF converters are also shockingly slow for this day and age, a simple document can take several seconds to compile compar…

There are a couple of issues here. First, Markdown and HTML simply punt on the vast majority of the issues that TeX solves. Just as the author rightly comments that TeX is not geared toward online publication, HTML is geared toward only that model. If you want to paginate HTML or Markdown, you do it yourself. Widows and orphans are (obviously) your problem to deal with. Compared to the work that TeX is doing, Markdow…

CSS3 actually supports pagination, automatic numbering and referencing, hyphenation, justified text, and footnotes. At least that's what the spec says...
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