4 ms·

To demonstrate what a barrier LaTeX is, he illustrates by writing the title of a paper, the author, date, and first line. The result is obviously human-readable

To demonstrate what a barrier LaTeX is, he illustrates by writing the title of a paper, the author, date, and first line. The result is obviously human-readable in a word processer without special training, but not in LaTeX.

moomin 9y ago
Show me the person who can't answer the question "Who was the author of the paper?" by reading the LaTeX version and I'll concede you have a point.
- panglott 9y ago
  The person first has to realize that it is an actual paper that they are supposed to be reading, instead of some kind of mangled file.
  - moomin 9y ago
    I think you're making it harder for yourself, not easier. Now you're assuming the following: 1) The person has no knowledge of LaTeX 2) They've never seen a markup language before 3) Yet somehow they've received this file, devoid of context, instead of the PDF, and they've opened it up in a text editor. And somehow this is relevant to something they're doing. Who is this person? What are they doing? How is their experience worse than the guy with no experience of Word, no knowledge of Word who opens up the equivalent Word document in vi?
geezerjay 9y ago
> he illustrates by writing the title of a paper, the author, date, and first line. The result is obviously human-readable in a word processer without special training, but not in LaTeX. And that shows, at best, that if all you do is write papers with the author, date, and only thefirst line, then perhaps Word is better suited for that particular task. But then, writing real documents is far more demanding than that. For instance, let's say you're trying to publish your paper in a document, and your paper has more text than a single first paragraph. You find out that the style guide imposed by a journal demands that all your figures are placed at the end, in annex. In LaTeX, all you need to do is add a single line of text (include a package). How much work does Word forces you to do? And I won't even get started on the fact that MS Word fails to support any vector graphics format.

moomin 9y ago

Show me the person who can't answer the question "Who was the author of the paper?" by reading the LaTeX version and I'll concede you have a point.

panglott 9y ago
The person first has to realize that it is an actual paper that they are supposed to be reading, instead of some kind of mangled file.
- moomin 9y ago
  I think you're making it harder for yourself, not easier. Now you're assuming the following: 1) The person has no knowledge of LaTeX 2) They've never seen a markup language before 3) Yet somehow they've received this file, devoid of context, instead of the PDF, and they've opened it up in a text editor. And somehow this is relevant to something they're doing. Who is this person? What are they doing? How is their experience worse than the guy with no experience of Word, no knowledge of Word who opens up the equivalent Word document in vi?

geezerjay 9y ago

> he illustrates by writing the title of a paper, the author, date, and first line. The result is obviously human-readable in a word processer without special training, but not in LaTeX. And that shows, at best, that if all you do is write papers with the author, date, and only thefirst line, then perhaps Word is better suited for that particular task. But then, writing real documents is far more demanding than that. For instance, let's say you're trying to publish your paper in a document, and your paper has more text than a single first paragraph. You find out that the style guide imposed by a journal demands that all your figures are placed at the end, in annex. In LaTeX, all you need to do is add a single line of text (include a package). How much work does Word forces you to do? And I won't even get started on the fact that MS Word fails to support any vector graphics format.