3 ms·

The idea of somebody critiquing Latex for being a difficult format to write in while writing almost exclusively plaintext is pretty baffling to me. It's like sa

The idea of somebody critiquing Latex for being a difficult format to write in while writing almost exclusively plaintext is pretty baffling to me. It's like saying that Photoshop is too complicated because I can draw a square just fine in Paint. My domain is pretty specific - typesetting chemistry papers, but for that it is absolutely invaluable. There's no tool on the market which can do it with anywhere approaching the ease. Even MSWord, which is now good enough that I can type simple maths about as fast as I can in Latex (although frankly even there I prefer Latex to futzing with a gui), doesn't have nearly the tools I need. I'll bet this is true in all sorts of smaller domains, too. Typeset anything unusual enough not to have good specialist tools and the freedom of Latex typesetting will make up for the learning curve in weeks if not days.

TremendousJudge 8y ago
>The idea of somebody critiquing Latex for being a difficult format to write in while writing almost exclusively plaintext is pretty baffling to me Creative writers for instance don't really care about typesetting; they want to keep their manuscript organized and to be able to change it easily. Here's en example[1] of a writer showing his personal workflow for writing (in this case using emacs) and you'll see what I mean [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtieBc3KptU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtieBc3KptU
exergy 8y ago
A few points. First, he is an academic in the humanities. According to his article, most people around him talking up latex tell him the main reason for picking up latex is so you don't have to worry about design. There are not much equation-writing in the humanities, so that's outside his domain. Second, he specifically does encourage using latex to typeset. Just not to type in the first place! Use Markdown, or a word processor, says the author, and then latex do what it is good at: typeset. But don't write long paragraphs in latex with attention-breaking code scattered around the text, since that places obstacles in the path of editing.
- wyattpeak 8y ago
  I recognise his area, but he's pretty general in his commentary "Don't use it to write (anywhere), it's just for typesetting", so I feel justified in using my similarly limited domain to critique. But I don't know how you expect me to write a chemistry paper without writing the equations? Just leave them blank? Typesetting is instrumental to simply composing the paper, it's not something I can do after. As I said in my initial comment, nothing else will actually do the task as fast as Latex, so it'd be pretty perverse to type in something else. Maybe it works for your domain, but not mine.
  - exergy 8y ago
    I am a Mechanical Engineering PhD student, with a whole lot of equation writing to do myself. And as someone who has very briefly dabbled with latex, I have found MathType to be the better solution for myself. I just cannot get myself to type out latex equation flawlessly first time, and MS Word's equation editor is an abomination. MathType has a rather large list of shortcuts requiring memorising (made more difficult by my dvorak layout), but once learnt, equation writing proceeds at an enjoyable clip. It has the secondary benefit for resulting in WYSIWYG, to match with the rest of my MS Word workflow.
    - wyattpeak 8y ago
      MathType looks decent for maths (and I assume engineering). I can see the appeal of the WYSIWYG, though I don't really see how learning a bunch of shortcuts is materially different from learning the Latex commands. Nevertheless, it still doesn't have a bunch of the symbols I need, which was my point about smaller domains. I'm glad it works for you, but given the advantage seems to me marginal and it offers no options for extensibility, I'm still unconvinced that we're at or even close to a stage where Latex has no place in writing documents.

TremendousJudge 8y ago

>The idea of somebody critiquing Latex for being a difficult format to write in while writing almost exclusively plaintext is pretty baffling to me Creative writers for instance don't really care about typesetting; they want to keep their manuscript organized and to be able to change it easily. Here's en example[1] of a writer showing his personal workflow for writing (in this case using emacs) and you'll see what I mean [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtieBc3KptU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtieBc3KptU

exergy 8y ago

A few points. First, he is an academic in the humanities. According to his article, most people around him talking up latex tell him the main reason for picking up latex is so you don't have to worry about design. There are not much equation-writing in the humanities, so that's outside his domain. Second, he specifically does encourage using latex to typeset. Just not to type in the first place! Use Markdown, or a word processor, says the author, and then latex do what it is good at: typeset. But don't write long paragraphs in latex with attention-breaking code scattered around the text, since that places obstacles in the path of editing.

wyattpeak 8y ago
I recognise his area, but he's pretty general in his commentary "Don't use it to write (anywhere), it's just for typesetting", so I feel justified in using my similarly limited domain to critique. But I don't know how you expect me to write a chemistry paper without writing the equations? Just leave them blank? Typesetting is instrumental to simply composing the paper, it's not something I can do after. As I said in my initial comment, nothing else will actually do the task as fast as Latex, so it'd be pretty perverse to type in something else. Maybe it works for your domain, but not mine.
- exergy 8y ago
  I am a Mechanical Engineering PhD student, with a whole lot of equation writing to do myself. And as someone who has very briefly dabbled with latex, I have found MathType to be the better solution for myself. I just cannot get myself to type out latex equation flawlessly first time, and MS Word's equation editor is an abomination. MathType has a rather large list of shortcuts requiring memorising (made more difficult by my dvorak layout), but once learnt, equation writing proceeds at an enjoyable clip. It has the secondary benefit for resulting in WYSIWYG, to match with the rest of my MS Word workflow.
  - wyattpeak 8y ago
    MathType looks decent for maths (and I assume engineering). I can see the appeal of the WYSIWYG, though I don't really see how learning a bunch of shortcuts is materially different from learning the Latex commands. Nevertheless, it still doesn't have a bunch of the symbols I need, which was my point about smaller domains. I'm glad it works for you, but given the advantage seems to me marginal and it offers no options for extensibility, I'm still unconvinced that we're at or even close to a stage where Latex has no place in writing documents.