7 ms·

The Beauty of LaTeX

84 points by wwortiz 16y ago

FalconNL 16y ago
Alternatively, for those who want good-looking text but prefer the WYSIWIG approach: just use a half-decent DTP program like InDesign, which will get you everything mentioned in the article except for the per-character transparency.
- scott_s 16y ago
  Lyx is a Latex editor with WYSIWIG features: http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/
  - omaranto 16y ago
    Also checkout TeXmacs: http://www.texmacs.org/ http://www.texmacs.org/
  - stan_rogers 16y ago
    To pick a nit, Lyx is WYSIWYM (the M being "mean") -- they point that out a whole bunch of times in the doco.
  - alok-g 16y ago
    A hyperlink is meant to be clickable, and it is not in either Lyx or TeXmacs. In this respect, they both fall short of WYSIWYG/M.
- ugh 16y ago
  InDesign is an absolutely awesome program, my favorite from Adobe next to Lightroom. Mac OS X’s font palette (while sucky in general and in dire need for a makeover to improve its UI — it’s like vintage 2000 or so) also offers you many of the mentioned features: 1 and 3 are on by default everywhere (type ‘shuffle’ into the Spotlight searchbox, ‘ffl’ will be turned into the appropriate ligature), 2, 4 and 5 are accessible through the palette but I don’t think OS X is clever about line-breaks (at least there are no settings to fine-tune). Don’t know about transparency. It is available to you in every program which uses OS X’s standard method of text input (like Pages or Safari).
  - alextgordon 16y ago
    OS X's text system does have per character transparency. It's not exposed by TextEdit but it is exposed by Pages's color picker. You could retrofit smart justification onto the text system, but it would require some non-trivial code (namely an NSTypesetter subclass). It's not easy, but it's possible.
- Niten 16y ago
  Another advantage of LaTeX over WYSIWIG alternatives is its simple plaintext representation. If we can still open any documents from our time period in 200 years, we'll be able to open that old LaTeX document of yours, because it's just ASCII (or Unicode in the case of XeLaTeX). And given the portability and simple requirements of the open source, exceptionally well documented TeX code base, it isn't far fetched to imagine someone could even run your documents through the actual LaTeX typesetter, if they really wanted to, 200 years or so from today. Do you think anyone will still be able to open your documents in Adobe InDesign 200 years from now? This may not matter to everyone, but if it matters for your purposes, LaTeX has a clear advantage here. EDIT: I'm not affiliated with the author of this article.
  - michaeltwofish 16y ago
    While longevity may be important, I think there are other more interesting advantages of plaintext, namely that I can edit in my editor of choice, I can use a host of existing tools, such as sed, grep, etc, to process it, and it plays well with standard source code management systems.
    - zumda 16y ago
      If you ever wrote a paper with another person, you will absolutely hate Word (and other binary formats). It makes working on the paper a pain, since only one person can work on it at the same time. The ability to split a document in multiple source files and having SVN/git/etc makes it really easy to work on the document at the same time.
imd 16y ago
This needs to be updated to compare against Word 2010. It's not there yet (and will probably always do line-by-line breaking, because who wants their text to jump around while editing?), but it can also do things that are not easy in LaTeX (where any custom thing requires somewhat deep knowledge).
- derefr 16y ago
  > and will probably always do line-by-line breaking, because who wants their text to jump around while editing? What about "re-flow whenever you leave everything alone for two seconds"?
  - pak 16y ago
    This. It's not like it doesn't already do some heart-stopping repagination every time you drag borders or type into a table that crosses a page boundary, or when you drag around any object that is being word-wrapped.
  - cma 16y ago
    WYSIWYGWYLEAFTS
    - loup-vaillant 16y ago
      I can't guess the second part. Could you lay it out for me? Please?
      - rlivsey 16y ago
        I think it's "What You See Is What You Get When You Leave Everything Alone For Two Seconds"
      - Gonsalu 16y ago
        I'm guessing it's related to the parent post. WYSIWYGWYLEAFTS - What You See Is What You Get Whenever You Leave Everything Alone For Two Seconds
  - 16y ago
dmlorenzetti 16y ago
For some reason, a lot of articles about LaTeX focus, like this one, on typographic features such as ligatures and line breaking. For me, where TeX earns its keep is the macro capability. While primitive as a programming language, the ability to define your own commands is a powerful tool for enforcing consistency and reducing effort. Two examples from work. For a proposal, we had to produce two documents, a short and a long one, with common titles and introductory paragraphs and cross-references and such. With LaTeX, we actually wrote just one proposal, with the contents embedded in TeX macros. Changing the macro definitions let us produce what became two "views" of the same material. Second, for a paper on sorption modeling, we used macros for all the physical variables, to make sure all the equations "read" correctly (e.g., writing "\cSorbBulk" rather than, say, "C_b"). Halfway through the paper, we decided on a new notation for distinguishing between gas- and sorbed-phase concentrations. It took maybe five minutes to update the pertinent definitions and re-set the paper.
- JadeNB 16y ago
  This is an excellent point. For me, the word change on your first line is what really demonstrates it: many people conflate TeX and LaTeX, because LaTeX is TeX; or, to put it less controversially, LaTeX is written in TeX (rather than other (wonderful) extensions, like PDFTeX, XeTeX, or LuaTeX, all of which require source-level changes). LaTeX 3 (http://www.latex-project.org/latex3.html http://www.latex-project.org/latex3.html) takes this even further—and all this drives home the point (which I hope I may safely assert here as fact) that it's often much better to start with a simple programming language and customise it to your need, than to have a high-level programming language painstakingly customised and tuned for an application that turns out to be two millimetres to the left of the one that you actually want.
  - crazydiamond 16y ago
    >it's often much better to start with a simple programming language and customise it to your need, than to have a high-level programming language painstakingly customised and tuned for an application that turns out to be two millimetres to the left of the one that you actually want. I am interested to know if you had other examples in mind when you said this. Disclaimer: not trying to start a discussion on languages, or lang war.
10ren 16y ago
The danger of LaTeX is you end up in the thrall of its beauty, forgetting your quest.
madair 16y ago
Is this a cargo cult? Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.
- gorog 16y ago
  Definitely. Those who write for the web don't need TeX. Those who write for print must not do the job of their editor. Manuscript standards are technically minimalist. They must look like they were written on a typewriter. LaTeX is for self-published authors and scientific papers (only because TeX was the first solution with a decent way to write equations).
  - eru 16y ago
    You can also use it for typesetting CVs and whatever people use Microsoft Word for. The syntax is a bit antiquated, but its bearable. I just which web browser would get the typography right one day.
upinsmoke 16y ago
Used it to write my thesis. Much better result than Word.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
HilbertSpace 16y ago
Okay, but my CM fonts in PDF are WAY too light. Any suggestions of a way to get darker CM fonts in PDF?
- lsb 16y ago
  If you've got a bunch of math, I'd say stick with CM, unless you want to reconfigure a bunch of stuff. For mostly text, set with sturdy fonts, you can use the "Serif" and "Sans" in Ubuntu with \usepackage{bera}, which stands for B[itstream] [V]era, but without the Bitstream(R) Vera(TM) name. Larger x-height, greater stroke-width, a solid look all around.
  - HilbertSpace 16y ago
    I was afraid of that. My understanding is that the problem with the CM fonts in PDF is actually not the CM fonts as in Metafont but in the conversion of the CM fonts to what PDF wants. So, that conversion was essentially by hand by starting with magnified TeX output and taking 'outlines', in part because what Metafont assumes for 'pens' conflicts with what PS does with 'pens'. So, from the last time I looked, it seemed that what I needed was just some new conversions of CM to what PDF wants. Actually with the TeX distribution I have, there are some nice fonts for just text, maybe Century Schoolbook, etc. But, again, I never want to give up on math or the AMS symbols. Uh, I just use TeX and not LaTeX!
    - lsb 16y ago
      For most intents and purposes, I'd recommend using pdfTeX instead of TeX: your general output format is LCD, not paper, and Metafont renders pixel fonts, not vector fonts (because TeX's output format after all is paper, not screen). Also, I found that using the LaTeX macros simplified my life a lot, instead of trying to reinvent the same formats over and over again. Why do you use just TeX instead of LaTeX?
- gchpaco 16y ago
  CM is a very light font. I used to set things in Palatino and AMS-Euler, which cooperate surprisingly well; CM and Euler do not get along very well. If you decide you want to use that, the following magic will set it up in normal LaTeX. \renewcommand{\rmdefault}{ppl} \linespread{1.05} \RequirePackage{eulervm} ==1== \AtBeginDocument{\normalfont} \RequirePackage[T1]{fontenc}\relax If you want to use Helvetica and Courier for SS and TT respectively, insert the following at ==1==. \RequirePackage[scaled]{helvet} \renewcommand{\ttdefault}{lmtt}
zokier 16y ago
It annoys me that Latex is compared to Word, when they are bit different systems. Word is a word processor, and Latex is typesetting system. Much fairer comparison would be against Quark or InDesign, which are designed for typesetting.
- spicyj 16y ago
  One problem is that Quark and InDesign are expensive, bloated pieces of software whereas LaTeX and Word are free and easy to obtain (okay, Word isn't free, but it's ubiquitous).
  - zokier 16y ago
    InDesign is bloated while Word isn't?
- nanairo 16y ago
  You are correct, of course, but Latex and Word are the two main tools to write essays and such. In other words while they may be different systems, they are used in place of each other. I've never seen someone editing an essay in InDesign (though I am sure there are such people).

84 points by wwortiz 16y ago

Alternatively, for those who want good-looking text but prefer the WYSIWIG approach: just use a half-decent DTP program like InDesign, which will get you everything mentioned in the article except for the per-character transparency.

scott_s 16y ago
Lyx is a Latex editor with WYSIWIG features: http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/
- omaranto 16y ago
  Also checkout TeXmacs: http://www.texmacs.org/ http://www.texmacs.org/
- stan_rogers 16y ago
  To pick a nit, Lyx is WYSIWYM (the M being "mean") -- they point that out a whole bunch of times in the doco.
- alok-g 16y ago
  A hyperlink is meant to be clickable, and it is not in either Lyx or TeXmacs. In this respect, they both fall short of WYSIWYG/M.
ugh 16y ago
InDesign is an absolutely awesome program, my favorite from Adobe next to Lightroom. Mac OS X’s font palette (while sucky in general and in dire need for a makeover to improve its UI — it’s like vintage 2000 or so) also offers you many of the mentioned features: 1 and 3 are on by default everywhere (type ‘shuffle’ into the Spotlight searchbox, ‘ffl’ will be turned into the appropriate ligature), 2, 4 and 5 are accessible through the palette but I don’t think OS X is clever about line-breaks (at least there are no settings to fine-tune). Don’t know about transparency. It is available to you in every program which uses OS X’s standard method of text input (like Pages or Safari).
- alextgordon 16y ago
  OS X's text system does have per character transparency. It's not exposed by TextEdit but it is exposed by Pages's color picker. You could retrofit smart justification onto the text system, but it would require some non-trivial code (namely an NSTypesetter subclass). It's not easy, but it's possible.
Niten 16y ago
Another advantage of LaTeX over WYSIWIG alternatives is its simple plaintext representation. If we can still open any documents from our time period in 200 years, we'll be able to open that old LaTeX document of yours, because it's just ASCII (or Unicode in the case of XeLaTeX). And given the portability and simple requirements of the open source, exceptionally well documented TeX code base, it isn't far fetched to imagine someone could even run your documents through the actual LaTeX typesetter, if they really wanted to, 200 years or so from today. Do you think anyone will still be able to open your documents in Adobe InDesign 200 years from now? This may not matter to everyone, but if it matters for your purposes, LaTeX has a clear advantage here. EDIT: I'm not affiliated with the author of this article.
- michaeltwofish 16y ago
  While longevity may be important, I think there are other more interesting advantages of plaintext, namely that I can edit in my editor of choice, I can use a host of existing tools, such as sed, grep, etc, to process it, and it plays well with standard source code management systems.
  - zumda 16y ago
    If you ever wrote a paper with another person, you will absolutely hate Word (and other binary formats). It makes working on the paper a pain, since only one person can work on it at the same time. The ability to split a document in multiple source files and having SVN/git/etc makes it really easy to work on the document at the same time.

imd 16y ago

This needs to be updated to compare against Word 2010. It's not there yet (and will probably always do line-by-line breaking, because who wants their text to jump around while editing?), but it can also do things that are not easy in LaTeX (where any custom thing requires somewhat deep knowledge).

derefr 16y ago
> and will probably always do line-by-line breaking, because who wants their text to jump around while editing? What about "re-flow whenever you leave everything alone for two seconds"?
- pak 16y ago
  This. It's not like it doesn't already do some heart-stopping repagination every time you drag borders or type into a table that crosses a page boundary, or when you drag around any object that is being word-wrapped.
- cma 16y ago
  WYSIWYGWYLEAFTS
  - loup-vaillant 16y ago
    I can't guess the second part. Could you lay it out for me? Please?
    - rlivsey 16y ago
      I think it's "What You See Is What You Get When You Leave Everything Alone For Two Seconds"
    - Gonsalu 16y ago
      I'm guessing it's related to the parent post. WYSIWYGWYLEAFTS - What You See Is What You Get Whenever You Leave Everything Alone For Two Seconds
- 16y ago

dmlorenzetti 16y ago

For some reason, a lot of articles about LaTeX focus, like this one, on typographic features such as ligatures and line breaking. For me, where TeX earns its keep is the macro capability. While primitive as a programming language, the ability to define your own commands is a powerful tool for enforcing consistency and reducing effort. Two examples from work. For a proposal, we had to produce two documents, a short and a long one, with common titles and introductory paragraphs and cross-references and such. With LaTeX, we actually wrote just one proposal, with the contents embedded in TeX macros. Changing the macro definitions let us produce what became two "views" of the same material. Second, for a paper on sorption modeling, we used macros for all the physical variables, to make sure all the equations "read" correctly (e.g., writing "\cSorbBulk" rather than, say, "C_b"). Halfway through the paper, we decided on a new notation for distinguishing between gas- and sorbed-phase concentrations. It took maybe five minutes to update the pertinent definitions and re-set the paper.

JadeNB 16y ago
This is an excellent point. For me, the word change on your first line is what really demonstrates it: many people conflate TeX and LaTeX, because LaTeX is TeX; or, to put it less controversially, LaTeX is written in TeX (rather than other (wonderful) extensions, like PDFTeX, XeTeX, or LuaTeX, all of which require source-level changes). LaTeX 3 (http://www.latex-project.org/latex3.html http://www.latex-project.org/latex3.html) takes this even further—and all this drives home the point (which I hope I may safely assert here as fact) that it's often much better to start with a simple programming language and customise it to your need, than to have a high-level programming language painstakingly customised and tuned for an application that turns out to be two millimetres to the left of the one that you actually want.
- crazydiamond 16y ago
  >it's often much better to start with a simple programming language and customise it to your need, than to have a high-level programming language painstakingly customised and tuned for an application that turns out to be two millimetres to the left of the one that you actually want. I am interested to know if you had other examples in mind when you said this. Disclaimer: not trying to start a discussion on languages, or lang war.

10ren 16y ago

The danger of LaTeX is you end up in the thrall of its beauty, forgetting your quest.

madair 16y ago

Is this a cargo cult? Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.

gorog 16y ago
Definitely. Those who write for the web don't need TeX. Those who write for print must not do the job of their editor. Manuscript standards are technically minimalist. They must look like they were written on a typewriter. LaTeX is for self-published authors and scientific papers (only because TeX was the first solution with a decent way to write equations).
- eru 16y ago
  You can also use it for typesetting CVs and whatever people use Microsoft Word for. The syntax is a bit antiquated, but its bearable. I just which web browser would get the typography right one day.

upinsmoke 16y ago

Used it to write my thesis. Much better result than Word.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

HilbertSpace 16y ago

Okay, but my CM fonts in PDF are WAY too light. Any suggestions of a way to get darker CM fonts in PDF?

lsb 16y ago
If you've got a bunch of math, I'd say stick with CM, unless you want to reconfigure a bunch of stuff. For mostly text, set with sturdy fonts, you can use the "Serif" and "Sans" in Ubuntu with \usepackage{bera}, which stands for B[itstream] [V]era, but without the Bitstream(R) Vera(TM) name. Larger x-height, greater stroke-width, a solid look all around.
- HilbertSpace 16y ago
  I was afraid of that. My understanding is that the problem with the CM fonts in PDF is actually not the CM fonts as in Metafont but in the conversion of the CM fonts to what PDF wants. So, that conversion was essentially by hand by starting with magnified TeX output and taking 'outlines', in part because what Metafont assumes for 'pens' conflicts with what PS does with 'pens'. So, from the last time I looked, it seemed that what I needed was just some new conversions of CM to what PDF wants. Actually with the TeX distribution I have, there are some nice fonts for just text, maybe Century Schoolbook, etc. But, again, I never want to give up on math or the AMS symbols. Uh, I just use TeX and not LaTeX!
  - lsb 16y ago
    For most intents and purposes, I'd recommend using pdfTeX instead of TeX: your general output format is LCD, not paper, and Metafont renders pixel fonts, not vector fonts (because TeX's output format after all is paper, not screen). Also, I found that using the LaTeX macros simplified my life a lot, instead of trying to reinvent the same formats over and over again. Why do you use just TeX instead of LaTeX?
gchpaco 16y ago
CM is a very light font. I used to set things in Palatino and AMS-Euler, which cooperate surprisingly well; CM and Euler do not get along very well. If you decide you want to use that, the following magic will set it up in normal LaTeX. \renewcommand{\rmdefault}{ppl} \linespread{1.05} \RequirePackage{eulervm} ==1== \AtBeginDocument{\normalfont} \RequirePackage[T1]{fontenc}\relax If you want to use Helvetica and Courier for SS and TT respectively, insert the following at ==1==. \RequirePackage[scaled]{helvet} \renewcommand{\ttdefault}{lmtt}

zokier 16y ago

It annoys me that Latex is compared to Word, when they are bit different systems. Word is a word processor, and Latex is typesetting system. Much fairer comparison would be against Quark or InDesign, which are designed for typesetting.

spicyj 16y ago
One problem is that Quark and InDesign are expensive, bloated pieces of software whereas LaTeX and Word are free and easy to obtain (okay, Word isn't free, but it's ubiquitous).
- zokier 16y ago
  InDesign is bloated while Word isn't?
nanairo 16y ago
You are correct, of course, but Latex and Word are the two main tools to write essays and such. In other words while they may be different systems, they are used in place of each other. I've never seen someone editing an essay in InDesign (though I am sure there are such people).