6 ms·

I strongly dislike LaTeX mostly because of its terrible error messages, because of the mess of incompatible packages and because of its inflexibility in layout

I strongly dislike LaTeX mostly because of its terrible error messages, because of the mess of incompatible packages and because of its inflexibility in layout adjustments. I admit that I never sat down to understand the latex design principles and learn it the hard way. So maybe I'm just uninformed. But seriously, I just want to write some text with formulas. The error messages are so useless, usually I'm forced to trace a bug by commenting out sections of text. For even the most trivial features, packages have to be included. Finding the right set of compatible packages is a science on its own. Usually you start with somebody else's document header and try to tweak it to your needs. And good luck placing an image on the page where you want it. I assume that if you spend some time understanding the language, it becomes clearer and less of a mess. But I feel like there is room for a declarative text editor that's a little bit more intuitive.

kevindong 10y ago
To some extent, ShareLaTeX has actually been building a wrapper to help you decode obscure error messages [0]. In addition, their online editor provides some basic linting [1]. [0]: https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2016/06/29/latex-log-hints.html https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2016/06/29/latex-log-hints.h... [1]: https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2016/11/01/introducting-latex-code-checker.html https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2016/11/01/introducting-late...
- konschubert 10y ago
  Yea, I'm now using sharelatex whenever I am teXing something. Its features ease the pain.
mastax 10y ago
SILE could be a new-and-improved LaTeX, someday. http://sile-typesetter.org/what-is/ http://sile-typesetter.org/what-is/
madez 10y ago
I agree. You mention two problems that I both agree with. First, LaTeX wants to be so much, that it can be difficult to get simple things done. Second, LaTeX's tooling is abhorrent. The quite useless error messages are just one example. Why, for the sake of whoever, would a user-facing tool require me to compile the source twice to get some references right? There is no valid excuse for that. The real problem here is that LaTeX is not what a document should be described in. LaTeX is a middleware that should be hidden from the user wherever possible.
- pja 10y ago
  There is no valid excuse for that. There was when TeX was originally written to run on memory constrained mini computers. I agree that there isn’t an excuse today.
andrepd 10y ago
Sure, there is room for a better latex, it's not like it's the tool to end all tools. But nobody has managed to produce an alternative so far... By the way, try the option [H] on floats, it forces it to stay in the position it is in the code, instead of letting TeX rearrange it to minimise wasted space.
- TwoBit 10y ago
  I wonder if the problem is that nobody will write something else because of the huge effort it will be, and there will be no users of the alternative until it achieves some level of functionality. I wonder if there's an economics term for this conundrum.
  - chongli 10y ago
    I wonder if there's an economics term for this conundrum It doesn't come from the field of economics but there is a very good term for why it's so hard to develop an alternative to complex systems like LaTeX: The Anna Karenina Principle [0] The reason nobody will jump on a LaTeX alternative is because everybody who uses LaTeX needs something different from it. In a way, you could say that LaTeX has a 'niche' in the long tail [1] of the distribution. The 'happy families' in this analogy would be everybody who gets by with Microsoft Word. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail
starky 10y ago
What you are describing sort of goes against the tenets of LaTeX. You aren't supposed to worry about formatting, just content. You have to explicitly tell it when you want to deviate from the template. In terms of placing figures, you just have to write \begin{figure}[h!]. I've never really had a problem with the error messages or packages personally.
- konschubert 10y ago
  I think it's a legitimate wish to change the footer height in a document.
  - pja 10y ago
    \setlength{\footskip}{length} should do the job. You might have to reduce the \textheight to make room. What are you trying to achieve?
    - konschubert 10y ago
      I'd probably try the /setlength command, but not consider that I have to adjust the invisible /textheight. Then I would wonder why it did not work. With HTML, at least I have the inspector to see where bounding boxes are. With latex I'm blind.
      - pja 10y ago
        \documentclass[a4paper]{article} \usepackage{layout} \begin{document} \layout{} \end{document} Ought to sort you out. There’s also the showframe package.
- roel_v 10y ago
  No, you're supposed to worry separately about formatting and content. I know that math-y people (I guess that means math, CS and physics people) think that just using the default settings is fine and those who are hit particularly hard with Stockholm syndrome sometimes even call it 'beautiful', but outside of that world, there is a stigma against papers formatted using just the default Latex (Tex?) settings. So wanting to use other fonts, more narrow margins and different header styles is something that should be if not easy, then at least within reach of even casual users. Which it isn't, right now. (in my experience, having tried to set up Latex and VCS-based authoring workflows several times with people who only took programming classes because they had to).
dreamcompiler 10y ago
HTML is infinitely easier to memorize than LaTeX, and Github-Flavored-Markdown is easier still. If they had math notation (Mathjax integration with GFM is still not there), I think they would eliminate 95% of the need for LaTeX.
- flukus 10y ago
  Doesn't latex offer a lot more control over layout (page breaks, columns)? For html you have to use css for that and markdown (thankfully) gives you nothing.
  - abritinthebay 10y ago
    Latex the document language? No. Latex the design template system? Yes, just about. They are to each other as HTML is to CSS - completely complementary. The main downfall of Latex is confusing the two spaces. The intent is good though. HTML + CSS is not as cleanly abstracted for pure document markup and layout (as it's a more general solution), but it's getting closer every year.
    - taeric 10y ago
      On this, I think we can just agree to disagree. For one, TeX did not try and make an arbitrary distinction between style language and content language. So, it is both. Period. LaTeX did try and layer the style to a separate file, but still the same language. Contrast this with the supposed HTML and CSS divide which has to later in a scripting language and all the joy they all enrich on each other. Is it any wonder that JSX is taking off? Now, tooling is behind. But that is because it isn't cool to build up tooling on something that doesn't have the user base of a browser.
      - abritinthebay 10y ago
        > So, it is both. Period. Yes, I know. That was my point. I concider that the problem and a major reason why it's still so hard to use and one reason why tooling sucks for it. > JSX ... has nothing to do with HTML & CSS which are both quite happy if you don't use scripting at all. If you think JSX applies in any way here I posit you don't understand the problem space.
tincholio 10y ago
Indeed, you seem uninformed. You probably should look at ConTeXt, rather than LaTeX.
TwoBit 10y ago
LaTeX isn't used much outside academia, so I don't think there's hope of it getting any better.
- konschubert 10y ago
  Yea, academia doesn't exactly have a track record of taking good care of its software...
  - mrweasel 10y ago
    At least for LaTeX there's also a ton of "cargo cult" involved. You either build a template, or get one from a professor, when you start as a student, and you just use that template for the rest of your time at the university. It's not uncommon to see a template that was initially created in the 90's and people just sort of added to it over the years.
badsectoracula 10y ago
Maybe something like TeXmacs? It is actually unrelated to TeX (AFAIK) and is basically a WYSIWYG-ish editor for structured documents. The only drawback is that it is kinda crash friendly (especially the latest version, try one of the 1.0.7.xxx instead of 1.99 version).
yoandy 10y ago
Indeed, I think Latex is one of this things you like or dislikes forever the first time you tried.

kevindong 10y ago

To some extent, ShareLaTeX has actually been building a wrapper to help you decode obscure error messages [0]. In addition, their online editor provides some basic linting [1]. [0]: https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2016/06/29/latex-log-hints.html https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2016/06/29/latex-log-hints.h... [1]: https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2016/11/01/introducting-latex-code-checker.html https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2016/11/01/introducting-late...

konschubert 10y ago
Yea, I'm now using sharelatex whenever I am teXing something. Its features ease the pain.

mastax 10y ago

SILE could be a new-and-improved LaTeX, someday. http://sile-typesetter.org/what-is/ http://sile-typesetter.org/what-is/

madez 10y ago

I agree. You mention two problems that I both agree with. First, LaTeX wants to be so much, that it can be difficult to get simple things done. Second, LaTeX's tooling is abhorrent. The quite useless error messages are just one example. Why, for the sake of whoever, would a user-facing tool require me to compile the source twice to get some references right? There is no valid excuse for that. The real problem here is that LaTeX is not what a document should be described in. LaTeX is a middleware that should be hidden from the user wherever possible.

pja 10y ago
There is no valid excuse for that. There was when TeX was originally written to run on memory constrained mini computers. I agree that there isn’t an excuse today.

andrepd 10y ago

Sure, there is room for a better latex, it's not like it's the tool to end all tools. But nobody has managed to produce an alternative so far... By the way, try the option [H] on floats, it forces it to stay in the position it is in the code, instead of letting TeX rearrange it to minimise wasted space.

TwoBit 10y ago
I wonder if the problem is that nobody will write something else because of the huge effort it will be, and there will be no users of the alternative until it achieves some level of functionality. I wonder if there's an economics term for this conundrum.
- chongli 10y ago
  I wonder if there's an economics term for this conundrum It doesn't come from the field of economics but there is a very good term for why it's so hard to develop an alternative to complex systems like LaTeX: The Anna Karenina Principle [0] The reason nobody will jump on a LaTeX alternative is because everybody who uses LaTeX needs something different from it. In a way, you could say that LaTeX has a 'niche' in the long tail [1] of the distribution. The 'happy families' in this analogy would be everybody who gets by with Microsoft Word. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail

starky 10y ago

What you are describing sort of goes against the tenets of LaTeX. You aren't supposed to worry about formatting, just content. You have to explicitly tell it when you want to deviate from the template. In terms of placing figures, you just have to write \begin{figure}[h!]. I've never really had a problem with the error messages or packages personally.

konschubert 10y ago
I think it's a legitimate wish to change the footer height in a document.
- pja 10y ago
  \setlength{\footskip}{length} should do the job. You might have to reduce the \textheight to make room. What are you trying to achieve?
  - konschubert 10y ago
    I'd probably try the /setlength command, but not consider that I have to adjust the invisible /textheight. Then I would wonder why it did not work. With HTML, at least I have the inspector to see where bounding boxes are. With latex I'm blind.
    - pja 10y ago
      \documentclass[a4paper]{article} \usepackage{layout} \begin{document} \layout{} \end{document} Ought to sort you out. There’s also the showframe package.
roel_v 10y ago
No, you're supposed to worry separately about formatting and content. I know that math-y people (I guess that means math, CS and physics people) think that just using the default settings is fine and those who are hit particularly hard with Stockholm syndrome sometimes even call it 'beautiful', but outside of that world, there is a stigma against papers formatted using just the default Latex (Tex?) settings. So wanting to use other fonts, more narrow margins and different header styles is something that should be if not easy, then at least within reach of even casual users. Which it isn't, right now. (in my experience, having tried to set up Latex and VCS-based authoring workflows several times with people who only took programming classes because they had to).

dreamcompiler 10y ago

HTML is infinitely easier to memorize than LaTeX, and Github-Flavored-Markdown is easier still. If they had math notation (Mathjax integration with GFM is still not there), I think they would eliminate 95% of the need for LaTeX.

flukus 10y ago
Doesn't latex offer a lot more control over layout (page breaks, columns)? For html you have to use css for that and markdown (thankfully) gives you nothing.
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  Latex the document language? No. Latex the design template system? Yes, just about. They are to each other as HTML is to CSS - completely complementary. The main downfall of Latex is confusing the two spaces. The intent is good though. HTML + CSS is not as cleanly abstracted for pure document markup and layout (as it's a more general solution), but it's getting closer every year.
  - taeric 10y ago
    On this, I think we can just agree to disagree. For one, TeX did not try and make an arbitrary distinction between style language and content language. So, it is both. Period. LaTeX did try and layer the style to a separate file, but still the same language. Contrast this with the supposed HTML and CSS divide which has to later in a scripting language and all the joy they all enrich on each other. Is it any wonder that JSX is taking off? Now, tooling is behind. But that is because it isn't cool to build up tooling on something that doesn't have the user base of a browser.
    - abritinthebay 10y ago
      > So, it is both. Period. Yes, I know. That was my point. I concider that the problem and a major reason why it's still so hard to use and one reason why tooling sucks for it. > JSX ... has nothing to do with HTML & CSS which are both quite happy if you don't use scripting at all. If you think JSX applies in any way here I posit you don't understand the problem space.

tincholio 10y ago

Indeed, you seem uninformed. You probably should look at ConTeXt, rather than LaTeX.

TwoBit 10y ago

LaTeX isn't used much outside academia, so I don't think there's hope of it getting any better.

konschubert 10y ago
Yea, academia doesn't exactly have a track record of taking good care of its software...
- mrweasel 10y ago
  At least for LaTeX there's also a ton of "cargo cult" involved. You either build a template, or get one from a professor, when you start as a student, and you just use that template for the rest of your time at the university. It's not uncommon to see a template that was initially created in the 90's and people just sort of added to it over the years.

badsectoracula 10y ago

Maybe something like TeXmacs? It is actually unrelated to TeX (AFAIK) and is basically a WYSIWYG-ish editor for structured documents. The only drawback is that it is kinda crash friendly (especially the latest version, try one of the 1.0.7.xxx instead of 1.99 version).

yoandy 10y ago

Indeed, I think Latex is one of this things you like or dislikes forever the first time you tried.