4 ms·

I agree beautiful defaults help LaTeX, all the more so because I always use someone else's well defined template. But, my main issues with Docs/Word is not jus

by mNovak 6y ago

I agree beautiful defaults help LaTeX, all the more so because I always use someone else's well defined template. But, my main issues with Docs/Word is not just "look", rather: - smart figure/caption/table handling (no orphaned captions, no figures hanging out in the middle of the page) - easy, label-based cross referencing (not selecting each from a popup interface) - text-based equation input All that being said, I still have an elaborate Word template I use for proposal writing. Because often I have to pass it off to others (who may not know TeX) to contribute, and sometimes I need to quickly bastardize my nice formatting to squeeze into hard page limits. ShareLatex / Overleaf is very good, but I'd love to see slightly more ease of use as OP suggests. I'd like to see a switchable WYSIWYG / code editor, so laypeople can make simple formatting changes visually without needing to know the right commands, and it propagates correctly into the underlying LaTeX.

MperorM 6y ago
Totally agree with your points. Latex remains the best tool for many tasks. But none of the things you described, I think latex does particularly well either. Better than Google docs and the likes, sure, but I think it's possible to do better. I truly think Google Docs could be so much more than it currently is. They for example built a brilliant speech-to-text feature that is only available on desktop. Mobile is the one place I could imagine using such a feature. Imagine writing your documents with speech while hiking deep in the woods. Feeling the fresh air with a view of a beautiful brook as Google transcribes your thoughts. That's how I want to write! Why on earth put so much effort into such a brilliant feature, and then have it only be available to users already sitting in front of a keyboard!? Apologies for the tangent, it was where my mind wanted me to go!

by mNovak 6y ago

MperorM 6y ago

Totally agree with your points. Latex remains the best tool for many tasks. But none of the things you described, I think latex does particularly well either. Better than Google docs and the likes, sure, but I think it's possible to do better. I truly think Google Docs could be so much more than it currently is. They for example built a brilliant speech-to-text feature that is only available on desktop. Mobile is the one place I could imagine using such a feature. Imagine writing your documents with speech while hiking deep in the woods. Feeling the fresh air with a view of a beautiful brook as Google transcribes your thoughts. That's how I want to write! Why on earth put so much effort into such a brilliant feature, and then have it only be available to users already sitting in front of a keyboard!? Apologies for the tangent, it was where my mind wanted me to go!