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I have only three gripes about LaTex and friends. First, LaTeX was intended for physical publication, so there's no native notion of text reflow or "responsive
by fny 9y ago
I have only three gripes about LaTex and friends.
First, LaTeX was intended for physical publication, so there's no native notion of text reflow or "responsiveness". Worse, everyone distributes their documents as PDFs, which are a PITA to read on a smaller device or ereader. At best, an author could utilize something like pandoc to distribute an HTML version, but alas, publishers never give a damn.
Second, I have been spoiled into expecting that I can modify the way a document looks to my liking, not yours. I can't invert the colors at night. I can't change the font size, line height, or margins--and my God do people use some huge margins with LaTeX.
Then comes the math syntax... Yes it's very powerful, but its a noisy mess to read and write. I really wish we had a simpler syntax akin to ASCIIMath[0].
LaTeX: (\left(\frac{1}{2}\right))
ASCIIMath: (1/2)
[0]: http://asciimath.org/ http://asciimath.org/
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Worse, everyone distributes their documents as PDFs, which are a PITA to read on smaller devices For anything other than simple linear text, I've found PDFs easier to work with than alternatives, even using letter/A4 PDFs on a smartphone.
- ygra 9y agoI've found two-column papers quite awful to read on screen without the ability to reflow. Once per page you have to scroll up again to the start of the page before continuing to the next page. It's easier with a large display where you can just fit the whole page, but on a small laptop screen it wasn't a pleasant experience.
- hvidgaard 9y agoIt's been quite a while since I wrote any LaTeX, but you could compile a LaTeX document into ePub if you wanted to. In essence, LaTeX is the source code for the document, and the output is whatever target it is compiled to. So, if it is compiled to pdf, that is what you get, but nothing fundamental prevents it from compiling to other formats, given that someone writes the compiler.
- Mathnerd314 9y agoI've just been writing HTML/ePubs directly, with http://www.bluegriffon.org/ http://www.bluegriffon.org/. What do you use instead of LaTeX?
- hvidgaard 9y agoI mainly used LaTeX when going through university, but after that my use is so casual that Word is more than good enough (think short letters and the like to parents or boardmembers). For documentation and notes Markdown works very well, and certainly much simpler. At work I use a mix of Word because that's what the other non tech people use, and Markdown for documentation.
- pmoriarty 9y agoYou blame LaTeX for all of these shortcomings, but some are a deficiency of your PDF reader. For instance, if you use zathura and mupdf to read PDFs, with a single keystroke you invert the text for reading at night. I do it all the time, and it works great. Whether that PDF was generated with LaTeX or not has nothing to do with it.