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The author fundamentally misunderstands the argument for LaTeX. The point isn't that people in word processors spend absurd amounts of time deciding what fonts

The author fundamentally misunderstands the argument for LaTeX. The point isn't that people in word processors spend absurd amounts of time deciding what fonts to use or might make stupid choices about formatting. In both word processors and LaTeX, people do the same thing: they write to match a style guide. In LaTeX you drop in a class file that defines your style guide and boom your whole LaTeX document is now formatted according to that style guide. If later you want a different style guide, switch out the class file and you've got something different. Need to write your bibliography in a different style, swap out the file defining that and all your references are changed. That's the point that advocates of LaTeX are making. You separate the content and presentation. Your LaTeX just contains the content and the style guide indicates how to actually format that content. Now, LaTeX doesn't actually do a great job at this. It shows its age. Its got a lot of messiness due to the fact that at hard its a macro expansion language. Its not quite possible to get away with putting everything to do with the style in the class file.

da_chicken 8y ago
> The point isn't that people in word processors spend absurd amounts of time deciding what fonts to use or might make stupid choices about formatting. Except that's exactly one of the most common reasons I see given to people who are not programmers to use LaTeX. "You don't have to fiddle with formatting." "You don't have to worry about text flow around embedded images." And so on. It's absolutely one of the most common reasons people give when the first ones should be, "You require a typesetting language," or "You require portable, comprehensive, codified, standardized, plain text equation markdown syntax." > In LaTeX you drop in a class file that defines your style guide and boom your whole LaTeX document is now formatted according to that style guide. If later you want a different style guide, switch out the class file and you've got something different. Need to write your bibliography in a different style, swap out the file defining that and all your references are changed. > > That's the point that advocates of LaTeX are making. You separate the content and presentation. Your LaTeX just contains the content and the style guide indicates how to actually format that content. I don't really buy these because you can say the same thing about Word. Word has templates which need to be configured and defined just like LaTeX classes. Word has heirarchal styles which can be changed after the fact to completely reformat the document easily. Word has a citation and reference tool which allows you to change the style on the fly [0]. Yes, the features of the two systems are not identical. Yes, some things are more difficult in Word. Some things are more difficult in LaTeX, too. Now we're down to subjective arguments about which you prefer, which isn't quite the same thing. [0]: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/APA-MLA-Chicago-%E2%80%93-automatically-format-bibliographies-405c207c-7070-42fa-91e7-eaf064b14dbb https://support.office.com/en-us/article/APA-MLA-Chicago-%E2...
- winstonewert 8y ago
  > Except that's exactly one of the most common reasons I see given to people who are not programmers to use LaTeX. There's a subtle point here: LaTeX helps with application not decision. When a LaTeX advocate says, "You don't have to fiddle with formatting." they are saying you don't have to apply the formatting to your document, its automatic. But the author misunderstands this as "you don't have to decide on the formatting for your document". So he responds: follow the defaults or a style guide. But that's not where LaTeX helps. LaTeX is about automatically applying a style to a document NOT deciding on what that style should be. > I don't really buy these because you can say the same thing about Word. Sure. LaTeX advocates are probably somewhat behind what the savvy word user is doing. There is less of gap in the approaches than might be assumed.

da_chicken 8y ago

> The point isn't that people in word processors spend absurd amounts of time deciding what fonts to use or might make stupid choices about formatting. Except that's exactly one of the most common reasons I see given to people who are not programmers to use LaTeX. "You don't have to fiddle with formatting." "You don't have to worry about text flow around embedded images." And so on. It's absolutely one of the most common reasons people give when the first ones should be, "You require a typesetting language," or "You require portable, comprehensive, codified, standardized, plain text equation markdown syntax." > In LaTeX you drop in a class file that defines your style guide and boom your whole LaTeX document is now formatted according to that style guide. If later you want a different style guide, switch out the class file and you've got something different. Need to write your bibliography in a different style, swap out the file defining that and all your references are changed. > > That's the point that advocates of LaTeX are making. You separate the content and presentation. Your LaTeX just contains the content and the style guide indicates how to actually format that content. I don't really buy these because you can say the same thing about Word. Word has templates which need to be configured and defined just like LaTeX classes. Word has heirarchal styles which can be changed after the fact to completely reformat the document easily. Word has a citation and reference tool which allows you to change the style on the fly [0]. Yes, the features of the two systems are not identical. Yes, some things are more difficult in Word. Some things are more difficult in LaTeX, too. Now we're down to subjective arguments about which you prefer, which isn't quite the same thing. [0]: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/APA-MLA-Chicago-%E2%80%93-automatically-format-bibliographies-405c207c-7070-42fa-91e7-eaf064b14dbb https://support.office.com/en-us/article/APA-MLA-Chicago-%E2...

winstonewert 8y ago
> Except that's exactly one of the most common reasons I see given to people who are not programmers to use LaTeX. There's a subtle point here: LaTeX helps with application not decision. When a LaTeX advocate says, "You don't have to fiddle with formatting." they are saying you don't have to apply the formatting to your document, its automatic. But the author misunderstands this as "you don't have to decide on the formatting for your document". So he responds: follow the defaults or a style guide. But that's not where LaTeX helps. LaTeX is about automatically applying a style to a document NOT deciding on what that style should be. > I don't really buy these because you can say the same thing about Word. Sure. LaTeX advocates are probably somewhat behind what the savvy word user is doing. There is less of gap in the approaches than might be assumed.