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I would say your comment is more embarrassing than the author. Your comment smacks of "I know latex, so I'm chomping at the bit to drown out any voices against

by exergy 8y ago

I would say your comment is more embarrassing than the author. Your comment smacks of "I know latex, so I'm chomping at the bit to drown out any voices against it!" It seems to me that you didn't fully read what the author wrote. Your entire comment is about your workflow, without much in the way of engaging with what the author wrote. He is not arguing that latex is useless. Not even that isn't supremely powerful. His argument, in essence, is that a word processor is superior for writing and editing what you wrote than latex is, because there is nothing but text on the screen to get in your way. So, editing is easier. He directs this argument in direct opposition to those who tout that the _main_ benefit of latex is that it lets you forget about formatting. The author is NOT contesting the typesetting benefits of latex. Nor is he saying "Only use a word processor, version control be damned". He is perfectly happy with markdown, for instance. He is merely saying don't write in latex just because you think it's better at getting out of your way.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
> “He is not arguing that latex is useless. Not even that isn't supremely powerful.“ I did not presume the author made either of these points. However, the scope of latex’s capabilities does undermine the author’s point about editing in a traditional word processor — that is an argument someone unfamiliar with latex’s capabilities might make, and so referencing the fact that latex is a more powerful tool than this is a valuable perspective for refuting the author’s hasty dismissal. > “His argument, in essence, is that a word processor is superior for writing and editing what you wrote than latex is, because there is nothing but text on the screen to get in your way.” I actually dispute what you claim here, because the author spends a lot of time talking about the claimed benefit of TeX that it decouples presentation from content, analyzing it linguistically from written statements of that benefit rather than pragmatically (for example, like separating written text out entirely and using \include or other features to inject text into formatting code). I think you misunderstood the article because one of the weakest points about it is that it starts by discussing this idea that TeX has a benefit from decoupling the visual presentation, but then the article conflates that topic with the topic of what is on the screen while you’re editing the source. Those two things are not actually very related, and you can edit content in TeX with as much or as little interlaced formatting or style commands as you please (in fact, that’s the whole point). Not to mention that it facilitates actual code review as a means of collaborative editing of either content or presentation logic or both. Something quite hard to achieve with wysiwyg editors. Your comment reads like a classic knee-jerk HN contrarian response to me. You’re in a rush to criticize. For example, you say, > “Your entire comment is about your workflow, without much in the way of engaging with what the author wrote.” as if this invalidates any points or makes the original post less embarrassing. But that was my whole intention. I was trying to explain how TeX is useful, because readers of the post might mistakenly think that editing in a traditional wysiwyg editor will be easier based on this post’s mistaken complaints. A useful reply to a post like that is to talk about how the tool can be used productively, so that people may feel it’s worth trying to edit latex source directly (since that works really well in practical cases, like my workflow which I wrote about). You seem to have some strange internal standard that the only type of valid critical response has to break down the OP directly and isolate responses to specific points. Not so. And in fact, this post isn’t good enough to warrant that. It’s a lot more efficient to just say, “nope, you’re wrong, here are real world workflows where, had you believed the advice of the post, you’d be in a much worse situation.” Further, while even after self-reflecting on the tone of my post (i.e. the choice of “embarrassing” to hopefully connote how short-sighted the OP’s perspective really is), I feel confident that my post was fair, not overly harsh, and useful. Meanwhile, the tone of your post feels like you’ve just got an ax to grind for some reason and want to be negative. You’re certainly entitled to that, I don’t mind. But your post definitely entrenches me further into the position that my post was pretty fair and that it’s reasonable to characterize the OP that way.

by exergy 8y ago

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

> “He is not arguing that latex is useless. Not even that isn't supremely powerful.“ I did not presume the author made either of these points. However, the scope of latex’s capabilities does undermine the author’s point about editing in a traditional word processor — that is an argument someone unfamiliar with latex’s capabilities might make, and so referencing the fact that latex is a more powerful tool than this is a valuable perspective for refuting the author’s hasty dismissal. > “His argument, in essence, is that a word processor is superior for writing and editing what you wrote than latex is, because there is nothing but text on the screen to get in your way.” I actually dispute what you claim here, because the author spends a lot of time talking about the claimed benefit of TeX that it decouples presentation from content, analyzing it linguistically from written statements of that benefit rather than pragmatically (for example, like separating written text out entirely and using \include or other features to inject text into formatting code). I think you misunderstood the article because one of the weakest points about it is that it starts by discussing this idea that TeX has a benefit from decoupling the visual presentation, but then the article conflates that topic with the topic of what is on the screen while you’re editing the source. Those two things are not actually very related, and you can edit content in TeX with as much or as little interlaced formatting or style commands as you please (in fact, that’s the whole point). Not to mention that it facilitates actual code review as a means of collaborative editing of either content or presentation logic or both. Something quite hard to achieve with wysiwyg editors. Your comment reads like a classic knee-jerk HN contrarian response to me. You’re in a rush to criticize. For example, you say, > “Your entire comment is about your workflow, without much in the way of engaging with what the author wrote.” as if this invalidates any points or makes the original post less embarrassing. But that was my whole intention. I was trying to explain how TeX is useful, because readers of the post might mistakenly think that editing in a traditional wysiwyg editor will be easier based on this post’s mistaken complaints. A useful reply to a post like that is to talk about how the tool can be used productively, so that people may feel it’s worth trying to edit latex source directly (since that works really well in practical cases, like my workflow which I wrote about). You seem to have some strange internal standard that the only type of valid critical response has to break down the OP directly and isolate responses to specific points. Not so. And in fact, this post isn’t good enough to warrant that. It’s a lot more efficient to just say, “nope, you’re wrong, here are real world workflows where, had you believed the advice of the post, you’d be in a much worse situation.” Further, while even after self-reflecting on the tone of my post (i.e. the choice of “embarrassing” to hopefully connote how short-sighted the OP’s perspective really is), I feel confident that my post was fair, not overly harsh, and useful. Meanwhile, the tone of your post feels like you’ve just got an ax to grind for some reason and want to be negative. You’re certainly entitled to that, I don’t mind. But your post definitely entrenches me further into the position that my post was pretty fair and that it’s reasonable to characterize the OP that way.