5 ms·

I love the concept of Latex, but usability it pretty terrible. We really need a modernized approach. Something akin to HTML but specifically for printed documen

I love the concept of Latex, but usability it pretty terrible. We really need a modernized approach. Something akin to HTML but specifically for printed documents.

paijiut 6y ago
Please, no. I've written thousands of pages in LaTeX, and it's far more usable than most tools IF you can resist trying to overcomplicate things. For example, want a diagram? If you do it in xfig/inkscape/omnigraffle, you'll have little pain. If you decide to get clever and try to programmatically do it via tikz or some other package, you've opened up a world of pain. The level of pain experienced by LaTeX users in my experience is more often poor choices made by the users who create unnecessary complexity. Avoid that, and it's a pretty reasonable model to work in.
- supergarfield 6y ago
  Sure, but it's probably possible to design something better too, that would let users do more complex things without dying. Maybe you don't need it for your usage, but this seems a bit like a Blub problem[1]. Keep the same core design of compiled source code files, but there are many things that don't make any sense. As just one example having to use the `\makeatletter` / `\makeatother` hack to change the visibility of macros seems completely insane to me when we have had languages with fine-grained visibility control for decades. This is one of the many things that make using many packages together needlessly hard. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
- s17n 6y ago
  Sure! But the same is true of Word, or CSS for that matter. Any layout system is going to run into this issue: since the space of possible layouts is so big, it's almost inevitable that users will decide they want something that isn't well supported by the system. If the system is sufficiently powerful, they will be able to achieve their desired layout, at the cost of wrecking usability / maintainability. MS word is also perfectly usable, as long as you don't try to do anything weird (as the example in the article illustrates!).
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  I love LaTeX for writing math-heavy documents, but as soon as it involves figures, images or pseudo-code it is quite horrible compared to Word. For me, the ideal solution would be something WordPerfect but with ability to type LaTeX equations. I want to be able to manipulate the "code" of the document but with a nice UI with real-time preview that helps me placing and formatting figures, text boxes for pseudo-code etc.
- alphachloride 6y ago
  That's a big if. One has to learn how to not over-complicate. Exactly the reason why latex has usability issues in many cases.
gumby 6y ago
Seems like a step backwards. One of the great things about Latex (or raw tex) is that you can simply type it into a buffer. No need to mouse around to select text or anything like that. Hard to find anything really more usable than that. Back in 1984 I wrote a small WYSIWYG editor at PARC that outputted primitive LaTex. Fortunately LaTeX was quite early stage and that little project went nowhere. But one of the lessons was that semantic markup was much easier to do by just typing rather than trying to infer it context, while -driven changes meant people usually just changed font and size and erased the semantic anyway. This has been borne out by Word. Edit: added bit starting “But one of...” to explain my comment
- supergarfield 6y ago
  I think the grandparent is talking about a better WYGIWYG language, like HTML generally is. You can (and most people, at least on HN, probably do) edit HTML in a buffer. Edit: changed parent → grandparent
  - tapia 6y ago
    What do you mean? Writing a document in html is not much different than doing it in LaTeX.
    - supergarfield 6y ago
      Yes, that's exactly what I mean, I was replying to > One of the great things about Latex (or raw tex) is that you can simply type it into a buffer. and pointing out it also applies to HTML.
  - gumby 6y ago
    I clarified my comment.
- nl 6y ago
  > One of the great things about Latex (or raw tex) is that you can simply type it into a buffer. No need to mouse around to select text or anything like that. Hard to find anything really more usable than that. More usable for you perhaps, but certainly not for me.
mmcdermott 6y ago
Lightweight text markup (Asciidoc or Pandoc) seem to be getting there.
- AngusH 6y ago
  Perhaps, although personally I prefer latex, because at its best it is somewhat self describing: \chapter{Animals} instead of == Animals or should that be: === Animals I think an xml or html like approach is better: <chapter>Animals</chapter> One of the big issue is modal states for structure or styling. I've often found trouble in latex because you are in some state that you didn't expect and somehow have to get out of. Nested XML would hopefully be more obvious about what your state is. Docbook probably got this right, but it was too verbose for most.
  - misnome 6y ago
    \chapter, or should that be \section, or should that be \subsection, or \subsubsection etc, depending on which layout you are using. \part maybe?
    - AngusH 6y ago
      Good point, https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Document_Structure#Sectioning_commands https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Document_Structure#Secti... wikibooks latex guide suggests \chapter is level 0, which gives "=" (1 equals sign), But then surely the h1 document title should be above that, which would be "=" (1), so a chapter is below at "==" (2)? \part apparently is -1 in latex, which would be seem to be odd. But document title isn't part of the latex sectioning hierarchy... Given that there is a document title, part and chapter, chapter could maybe "===" (3) or maybe "==" (2) if we're not using parts or we don't consider the document title. I think anyway? It's unfortunate that the creators of latex did not follow the HTML heading rules better. (despite latex pre-dating html of course) :-)
  - mmcdermott 6y ago
    True, it is more self-describing and that has some real benefits. What I typically found was that I didn't like writing in LaTeX for the same reason I don't like writing in HTML -- the syntax occupies more space and so it gets more attention, which pulls me away from the thoughts I was actually trying to write.
meemo 6y ago
I keep my custom commands and styles in a separate tex file that I `\input` into the document file I am working on. The document file usually looks very clean with this method. It feels very much like HTML and CSS to me.
SebastianKra 6y ago
HTML is the answer. - Can be opened on every device - Content can be embedded in base64, so you only have to share one file - Dynamic layout, so it looks nice even on phones - Searchable, standardized XML structure - Great customizability through CSS and optionally JS - Can be written in markdown - Basic support for page breaks, if you really must print the document (IA Writer already has some HTML-Templates meant for printing.) The only downside I can think of, is that you can't lock the document to prevent edits. However, conventions are what keeps PDF alive. Until the academic world realizes that they can do better than Latex, we're stuck.
- chromanoid 6y ago
  I disagree. The answer is not found yet. Even when using semantic HTML elements it's too much of a styling language. We need a system that solves the overlapping markup problem and is fully semantic.
- adrian_b 6y ago
  I have seen here similar opinions about HTML vs. PDF in a few other threads. However, this is a matter of personal opinion and I am certain that nobody knows how many people prefer PDF and how many prefer HTML. I strongly prefer PDF for any non-ephemeral content that I might need to read twice or more times, so I hate anyone who forces me to read an HTML user manual or scientific paper, instead of providing PDF documents for them. Even if HTML can be opened on every device, it also looks different on every device and it looks bad on those that are different from the one used by the developer (unless the HTML pages have been carefully designed to look good on various devices, which seldom happens). Even on a small smartphone screen, I prefer a good PDF viewer with a good user interface that makes it easy to zoom & pan, instead of the feeble attempts of the Web browsers to reformat the text, which make very difficult the navigation through complex technical documents. "Print" support is horrible for HTML. Modern Web pages, which use a lot of JS, are almost always mutilated when you use the "Print" command in both Chrome and Firefox, even if they display the pages correctly outside the "Print" mode.
- zzless 6y ago
  To make some counterpoints: - On any device as long as it runs a browser - You can write TeX documents as a single file with ease - Phones are not designed for reading, so dynamic layout or not, it will still be inferior to finely typeset document - With care so can be TeX; carelessly written HTML docs will be just as bad as anything else - CSS is a pretty poor layout tool; typographically speaking, CSS is very subpar to TeX's capabilities, using JS... well how much better is it than just using macros in TeX/LaTeX? - markdown is fine for simple stuff but for highly complicated documents involving lots of generated tables, lists, and mathematics it is almost like having no tool at all; - but many people DO like printed documents (I rarely can stand reading anything but basic technical stuff on screen, say language reference is fine but anything that requires thinking, has to be printed); TeX is not locked to pdf in any way (it is not even it's native format). HTML's support for formulas is primitive (the only decent tools available are ... based on TeX). Academic world is not entirely uniform either but while I do think LaTeX is not ideal (TeX is though), I simply shudder when I think about Word or any MS or Adobe products.
08-15 6y ago
Docbook?
- glandium 6y ago
  + XSL-FO. A blast from the past. Waw, FOP is even still maintained: "Apache™ FOP version 2.5 was released on 13 May 2020." https://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/status.html https://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/status.html
  - 08-15 6y ago
    I'd have said Jadetex. I fondly remember the SGML toolchain; the XML stuff felt horrible in comparison.

I love the concept of Latex, but usability it pretty terrible. We really need a modernized approach. Something akin to HTML but specifically for printed documents.

paijiut 6y ago

Please, no. I've written thousands of pages in LaTeX, and it's far more usable than most tools IF you can resist trying to overcomplicate things. For example, want a diagram? If you do it in xfig/inkscape/omnigraffle, you'll have little pain. If you decide to get clever and try to programmatically do it via tikz or some other package, you've opened up a world of pain. The level of pain experienced by LaTeX users in my experience is more often poor choices made by the users who create unnecessary complexity. Avoid that, and it's a pretty reasonable model to work in.

supergarfield 6y ago
Sure, but it's probably possible to design something better too, that would let users do more complex things without dying. Maybe you don't need it for your usage, but this seems a bit like a Blub problem[1]. Keep the same core design of compiled source code files, but there are many things that don't make any sense. As just one example having to use the `\makeatletter` / `\makeatother` hack to change the visibility of macros seems completely insane to me when we have had languages with fine-grained visibility control for decades. This is one of the many things that make using many packages together needlessly hard. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
s17n 6y ago
Sure! But the same is true of Word, or CSS for that matter. Any layout system is going to run into this issue: since the space of possible layouts is so big, it's almost inevitable that users will decide they want something that isn't well supported by the system. If the system is sufficiently powerful, they will be able to achieve their desired layout, at the cost of wrecking usability / maintainability. MS word is also perfectly usable, as long as you don't try to do anything weird (as the example in the article illustrates!).
magicalhippo 6y ago
I love LaTeX for writing math-heavy documents, but as soon as it involves figures, images or pseudo-code it is quite horrible compared to Word. For me, the ideal solution would be something WordPerfect but with ability to type LaTeX equations. I want to be able to manipulate the "code" of the document but with a nice UI with real-time preview that helps me placing and formatting figures, text boxes for pseudo-code etc.
alphachloride 6y ago
That's a big if. One has to learn how to not over-complicate. Exactly the reason why latex has usability issues in many cases.

gumby 6y ago

Seems like a step backwards. One of the great things about Latex (or raw tex) is that you can simply type it into a buffer. No need to mouse around to select text or anything like that. Hard to find anything really more usable than that. Back in 1984 I wrote a small WYSIWYG editor at PARC that outputted primitive LaTex. Fortunately LaTeX was quite early stage and that little project went nowhere. But one of the lessons was that semantic markup was much easier to do by just typing rather than trying to infer it context, while -driven changes meant people usually just changed font and size and erased the semantic anyway. This has been borne out by Word. Edit: added bit starting “But one of...” to explain my comment

supergarfield 6y ago
I think the grandparent is talking about a better WYGIWYG language, like HTML generally is. You can (and most people, at least on HN, probably do) edit HTML in a buffer. Edit: changed parent → grandparent
- tapia 6y ago
  What do you mean? Writing a document in html is not much different than doing it in LaTeX.
  - supergarfield 6y ago
    Yes, that's exactly what I mean, I was replying to > One of the great things about Latex (or raw tex) is that you can simply type it into a buffer. and pointing out it also applies to HTML.
- gumby 6y ago
  I clarified my comment.
nl 6y ago
> One of the great things about Latex (or raw tex) is that you can simply type it into a buffer. No need to mouse around to select text or anything like that. Hard to find anything really more usable than that. More usable for you perhaps, but certainly not for me.

mmcdermott 6y ago

Lightweight text markup (Asciidoc or Pandoc) seem to be getting there.

AngusH 6y ago
Perhaps, although personally I prefer latex, because at its best it is somewhat self describing: \chapter{Animals} instead of == Animals or should that be: === Animals I think an xml or html like approach is better: <chapter>Animals</chapter> One of the big issue is modal states for structure or styling. I've often found trouble in latex because you are in some state that you didn't expect and somehow have to get out of. Nested XML would hopefully be more obvious about what your state is. Docbook probably got this right, but it was too verbose for most.
- misnome 6y ago
  \chapter, or should that be \section, or should that be \subsection, or \subsubsection etc, depending on which layout you are using. \part maybe?
  - AngusH 6y ago
    Good point, https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Document_Structure#Sectioning_commands https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Document_Structure#Secti... wikibooks latex guide suggests \chapter is level 0, which gives "=" (1 equals sign), But then surely the h1 document title should be above that, which would be "=" (1), so a chapter is below at "==" (2)? \part apparently is -1 in latex, which would be seem to be odd. But document title isn't part of the latex sectioning hierarchy... Given that there is a document title, part and chapter, chapter could maybe "===" (3) or maybe "==" (2) if we're not using parts or we don't consider the document title. I think anyway? It's unfortunate that the creators of latex did not follow the HTML heading rules better. (despite latex pre-dating html of course) :-)
- mmcdermott 6y ago
  True, it is more self-describing and that has some real benefits. What I typically found was that I didn't like writing in LaTeX for the same reason I don't like writing in HTML -- the syntax occupies more space and so it gets more attention, which pulls me away from the thoughts I was actually trying to write.

meemo 6y ago

I keep my custom commands and styles in a separate tex file that I `\input` into the document file I am working on. The document file usually looks very clean with this method. It feels very much like HTML and CSS to me.

SebastianKra 6y ago

HTML is the answer. - Can be opened on every device - Content can be embedded in base64, so you only have to share one file - Dynamic layout, so it looks nice even on phones - Searchable, standardized XML structure - Great customizability through CSS and optionally JS - Can be written in markdown - Basic support for page breaks, if you really must print the document (IA Writer already has some HTML-Templates meant for printing.) The only downside I can think of, is that you can't lock the document to prevent edits. However, conventions are what keeps PDF alive. Until the academic world realizes that they can do better than Latex, we're stuck.

chromanoid 6y ago
I disagree. The answer is not found yet. Even when using semantic HTML elements it's too much of a styling language. We need a system that solves the overlapping markup problem and is fully semantic.
adrian_b 6y ago
I have seen here similar opinions about HTML vs. PDF in a few other threads. However, this is a matter of personal opinion and I am certain that nobody knows how many people prefer PDF and how many prefer HTML. I strongly prefer PDF for any non-ephemeral content that I might need to read twice or more times, so I hate anyone who forces me to read an HTML user manual or scientific paper, instead of providing PDF documents for them. Even if HTML can be opened on every device, it also looks different on every device and it looks bad on those that are different from the one used by the developer (unless the HTML pages have been carefully designed to look good on various devices, which seldom happens). Even on a small smartphone screen, I prefer a good PDF viewer with a good user interface that makes it easy to zoom & pan, instead of the feeble attempts of the Web browsers to reformat the text, which make very difficult the navigation through complex technical documents. "Print" support is horrible for HTML. Modern Web pages, which use a lot of JS, are almost always mutilated when you use the "Print" command in both Chrome and Firefox, even if they display the pages correctly outside the "Print" mode.
zzless 6y ago
To make some counterpoints: - On any device as long as it runs a browser - You can write TeX documents as a single file with ease - Phones are not designed for reading, so dynamic layout or not, it will still be inferior to finely typeset document - With care so can be TeX; carelessly written HTML docs will be just as bad as anything else - CSS is a pretty poor layout tool; typographically speaking, CSS is very subpar to TeX's capabilities, using JS... well how much better is it than just using macros in TeX/LaTeX? - markdown is fine for simple stuff but for highly complicated documents involving lots of generated tables, lists, and mathematics it is almost like having no tool at all; - but many people DO like printed documents (I rarely can stand reading anything but basic technical stuff on screen, say language reference is fine but anything that requires thinking, has to be printed); TeX is not locked to pdf in any way (it is not even it's native format). HTML's support for formulas is primitive (the only decent tools available are ... based on TeX). Academic world is not entirely uniform either but while I do think LaTeX is not ideal (TeX is though), I simply shudder when I think about Word or any MS or Adobe products.

08-15 6y ago

Docbook?

glandium 6y ago
+ XSL-FO. A blast from the past. Waw, FOP is even still maintained: "Apache™ FOP version 2.5 was released on 13 May 2020." https://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/status.html https://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/status.html
- 08-15 6y ago
  I'd have said Jadetex. I fondly remember the SGML toolchain; the XML stuff felt horrible in comparison.