6 ms·

This is also very true in my experience, and seems to be in large part caused by the absence of proper namespacing, scoping, and general rules about how package

This is also very true in my experience, and seems to be in large part caused by the absence of proper namespacing, scoping, and general rules about how packages should be implemented to minimize bad interactions. I feel like this is a significant shortcoming of Latex, and it really is a mystery to me why no one has seriously tried to write an alternative typesetting system. I know Latex is good enough for lots of applications, and would require a lot of work to rewrite, but I can think of freely available projects with less glaring shortcomings for which people have started successful competitors (Firefox -> Chrome, KDE and GNOME, gcc -> llvm, etc.).

daurnimator 10y ago
What about SILE? http://sile-typesetter.org/ http://sile-typesetter.org/
- scooke 10y ago
  What about it? If you use it could you say a bit more before I click the link please?
massysett 10y ago
There are plenty of alternatives. LaTeX is merely a TeX macro package. There are others, such as ConTeXt. Also, if you hate the pick-a-package mentality, there are LaTeX packages that attempt to do it all in one package--Memoir is one. You can elect to opt out of fancy layers on top of TeX and go with Extended Plain TeX or even just writing in plain TeX, which apparently Knuth did. Don't like TeX at all? Try roff (or, more realistically these days, groff.) There is a package of roff macros called Mom, which now comes with groff. In my experience roff is a better UNIX citizen than Tex & Co. I can put roff in a pipeline and it will do what I expect. TeX programs generally do not like to be run in this fashion. Perhaps as a consequence, it seems roff is hard to find outside of UNIX (roff is sort of a UNIX artifact) while TeX and friends run on Windows. I have slapped together a few utilities (I call one "latexstream") so that I can use LaTeX from a shell prompt without dealing with a bunch of temporary files scattered everywhere. My needs are somewhat simple: I have a system that prints recipes and grocery lists. Nothing beats paper for a task like this. (I see some people using iPads in the kitchen. Forget that. I'm not taking greasy fingers to an expensive tablet.) Generally I am not happy using LaTeX for this. I actually do not want to separate content and presentation. I don't like having to muck around with packages to get what I want. And I don't like dealing with huge TeX distributions when I just need a few things. But every time I look into all the alternatives I outlined above, I wind up sighing and sticking with LaTeX. None of these alternatives have the community that LaTeX has. I can do relatively simple things in LaTeX (like columns done in particular ways) that would require me to write a lot of code in plain TeX or in roff. Yes, TeX distributions are large, but I am now figuring out how to pare them down to just what I need. (Even though TeX Live suggests you install the whole thing. That's gigabytes. I'm on a smallish SSD. No thanks.) So folks definitely have come up with alternatives to LaTeX. But if most folks are like me, I imagine they look at these alternatives and conclude that LaTeX with a gazillion packages works well enough. [edit] forgot yet another alternative: Apache FOP, which uses XML. Some Docbook tool chains use it. IMO the output from those never look as good as the tool chains that ultimately use TeX.
- patrickdavey 10y ago
  I don't suppose you have your recipe system online anywhere? I've been contemplating making one for a while (I really like the recipe cards on cookingforengineers.com)
  - massysett 10y ago
    No, it is a nasty mess of shell scripts and Haskell, though mostly Haskell now. (There used to be XML for recipes, what a mess.) It is useless to others without documentation, which would take a long time to write. Maybe one day. It makes grocery lists with items in categories, which saves me so much time that I have been using it every week for years. But if someone made something decent I would happily pay for it.
    - patrickdavey 10y ago
      Heh, that sounds like a very neat system. The category for shopping especially so.
    - doodoogoo 10y ago
      Would you mind uploading it somewhere nonetheless? Just your design and flow should be a good read (from source).
  - freyfogle 10y ago
    There's a cookbook template on Overleaf https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/cookbook https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/cookbook
- maxerickson 10y ago
  The parent project seems to have stopped updating, but there are windows builds for a lot of stuff here: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/groff.htm http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/groff.htm
- baldfat 10y ago
  Pandoc working with Markdown is a pretty good alternative especially if your needs are not complex. Pandoc is a document converter. I can make a Markdown file and output to LaTex or just PDF. http://pandoc.org/ http://pandoc.org/ I have learned that I get things done faster and works 90% of the time for my needs.
asadjb 10y ago
While I have never used LaTex before, the package situation that you talk about isn't anything new. It's just another twist on "Not Invented Here". Writing new code that does exactly what you want is usually easier than picking up something that works and modifying it to suit your needs, making sure it's backwards compatible.

daurnimator 10y ago

What about SILE? http://sile-typesetter.org/ http://sile-typesetter.org/

scooke 10y ago
What about it? If you use it could you say a bit more before I click the link please?

massysett 10y ago

There are plenty of alternatives. LaTeX is merely a TeX macro package. There are others, such as ConTeXt. Also, if you hate the pick-a-package mentality, there are LaTeX packages that attempt to do it all in one package--Memoir is one. You can elect to opt out of fancy layers on top of TeX and go with Extended Plain TeX or even just writing in plain TeX, which apparently Knuth did. Don't like TeX at all? Try roff (or, more realistically these days, groff.) There is a package of roff macros called Mom, which now comes with groff. In my experience roff is a better UNIX citizen than Tex & Co. I can put roff in a pipeline and it will do what I expect. TeX programs generally do not like to be run in this fashion. Perhaps as a consequence, it seems roff is hard to find outside of UNIX (roff is sort of a UNIX artifact) while TeX and friends run on Windows. I have slapped together a few utilities (I call one "latexstream") so that I can use LaTeX from a shell prompt without dealing with a bunch of temporary files scattered everywhere. My needs are somewhat simple: I have a system that prints recipes and grocery lists. Nothing beats paper for a task like this. (I see some people using iPads in the kitchen. Forget that. I'm not taking greasy fingers to an expensive tablet.) Generally I am not happy using LaTeX for this. I actually do not want to separate content and presentation. I don't like having to muck around with packages to get what I want. And I don't like dealing with huge TeX distributions when I just need a few things. But every time I look into all the alternatives I outlined above, I wind up sighing and sticking with LaTeX. None of these alternatives have the community that LaTeX has. I can do relatively simple things in LaTeX (like columns done in particular ways) that would require me to write a lot of code in plain TeX or in roff. Yes, TeX distributions are large, but I am now figuring out how to pare them down to just what I need. (Even though TeX Live suggests you install the whole thing. That's gigabytes. I'm on a smallish SSD. No thanks.) So folks definitely have come up with alternatives to LaTeX. But if most folks are like me, I imagine they look at these alternatives and conclude that LaTeX with a gazillion packages works well enough. [edit] forgot yet another alternative: Apache FOP, which uses XML. Some Docbook tool chains use it. IMO the output from those never look as good as the tool chains that ultimately use TeX.

patrickdavey 10y ago
I don't suppose you have your recipe system online anywhere? I've been contemplating making one for a while (I really like the recipe cards on cookingforengineers.com)
- massysett 10y ago
  No, it is a nasty mess of shell scripts and Haskell, though mostly Haskell now. (There used to be XML for recipes, what a mess.) It is useless to others without documentation, which would take a long time to write. Maybe one day. It makes grocery lists with items in categories, which saves me so much time that I have been using it every week for years. But if someone made something decent I would happily pay for it.
  - patrickdavey 10y ago
    Heh, that sounds like a very neat system. The category for shopping especially so.
  - doodoogoo 10y ago
    Would you mind uploading it somewhere nonetheless? Just your design and flow should be a good read (from source).
- freyfogle 10y ago
  There's a cookbook template on Overleaf https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/cookbook https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/cookbook
maxerickson 10y ago
The parent project seems to have stopped updating, but there are windows builds for a lot of stuff here: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/groff.htm http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/groff.htm
baldfat 10y ago
Pandoc working with Markdown is a pretty good alternative especially if your needs are not complex. Pandoc is a document converter. I can make a Markdown file and output to LaTex or just PDF. http://pandoc.org/ http://pandoc.org/ I have learned that I get things done faster and works 90% of the time for my needs.

asadjb 10y ago

While I have never used LaTex before, the package situation that you talk about isn't anything new. It's just another twist on "Not Invented Here". Writing new code that does exactly what you want is usually easier than picking up something that works and modifying it to suit your needs, making sure it's backwards compatible.