6 ms·

Anti-LaTeX, Pro-Word paper corrections for “sizing and placement of the figures” (2015)

31 points by zdw 5y ago

amai 5y ago
LaTeX is free and it is open source. That alone explains its wide use in academia, where money for paid software like MS Word and knowhow for managing software licenses is often not available. You could probably make a similar study comparing Mathematica/Wolfram language against Python with a similar result. Still academia will always prefer Python, because it is free and open source.
querez 5y ago
it would be nice if you could link to the original paper as well. I would imagine there is some irony here, but it's impossible to tell without seeing the paper in question.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- daxuak 5y ago
  original: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125830.s001 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125830.s001 corrected: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125830.s002 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125830.s002 source of the links: the section above "Reference" in https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0125830 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
marcodiego 5y ago
Merits of the paper are already been discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29692303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29692303
wodenokoto 5y ago
I fail to see the irony. I've gotten as many sizing and placement problems in LaTex as I've had in Word.
- alerighi 5y ago
  In LaTeX it's difficult to get it right first time (to me not true if you know it), but when you do it's there, you can add 1000 pages and it didn't mess the positioning of you images, like in Word where you add one word and you have to start all over again. Also when placing and deciding sizes of images to me it's easier a declarative language than sizing things with the mouse, where it's very difficult to get them right.
  - tiahura 5y ago
    “in Word where you add one word and you have to start all over again.” Not necessarily, it depends on how it’s formatted.
    - p_l 5y ago
      The problem with Word is that it defaults to an interface that makes it harder than it should be and discourages the proper use of semantic styling. A price to pay for emulating advanced typewriter as default UI setting :(
      - alerighi 5y ago
        Are there even other UIs for Word? Interesting, I didn't know that. But I think that we still are talking about another "point and click" interface. The difference between Word and LaTeX is that the first one is a graphical WYSIWYG editor, while the second one is a markup language. To me they are not even comparable, It's like comparing Wordpress with HTML.
        p_l 5y ago
        You can switch to logical view (I don't remember the exact name, "conspect"?) which doesn't apply 95% of styling and reflects hierarchy of the document + makes it easier to apply semantic styles en masse. A big problem is that it's simply easier most of the time to hit Ctrl-B rather than select a style named "emphasis" and so on :(
martin8412 5y ago
What a complete garbage paper. They can’t draw those conclusions from their data. The data is not representative of real world use.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
timwaagh 5y ago
I don't think anybody truly disputes the conclusions in the paper. Word is faster. LaTeX can make you feel like a pro. I fell in love with it at first. I wanted to do everything in it. It is indeed great software. LaTeX also does a lot of things to get text to look nice, though Word doesn't look bad either. I don't think the fact that figures needed correcting is much of an argument. At least in Word it's possible to move figures around around easily. In LaTeX the compiler places it for you and there's little you can do about it. Personally the dogmatic choice of LaTeX is one of those things I disliked about the academic world. They deliberately choose the most difficult way when easier ways are available with few compromises.
- DoctorOW 5y ago
  I think it's generally agreed upon that LaTeX is more difficult to use than Word for basic documents, but as requirements grow more advanced it slowly becomes the other way around. I think the point of that cutoff is often exaggerated in the academic world. To put it cynically, I think there's somewhat of an ego boost in thinking one's writing is so advanced that they must use special tools to express it. That's not the conscious thought process, just an explanation for the allure of overcomplicating things.

31 points by zdw 5y ago

amai 5y ago

LaTeX is free and it is open source. That alone explains its wide use in academia, where money for paid software like MS Word and knowhow for managing software licenses is often not available. You could probably make a similar study comparing Mathematica/Wolfram language against Python with a similar result. Still academia will always prefer Python, because it is free and open source.

querez 5y ago

it would be nice if you could link to the original paper as well. I would imagine there is some irony here, but it's impossible to tell without seeing the paper in question.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
daxuak 5y ago
original: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125830.s001 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125830.s001 corrected: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125830.s002 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125830.s002 source of the links: the section above "Reference" in https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0125830 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

marcodiego 5y ago

Merits of the paper are already been discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29692303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29692303

wodenokoto 5y ago

I fail to see the irony. I've gotten as many sizing and placement problems in LaTex as I've had in Word.

alerighi 5y ago
In LaTeX it's difficult to get it right first time (to me not true if you know it), but when you do it's there, you can add 1000 pages and it didn't mess the positioning of you images, like in Word where you add one word and you have to start all over again. Also when placing and deciding sizes of images to me it's easier a declarative language than sizing things with the mouse, where it's very difficult to get them right.
- tiahura 5y ago
  “in Word where you add one word and you have to start all over again.” Not necessarily, it depends on how it’s formatted.
  - p_l 5y ago
    The problem with Word is that it defaults to an interface that makes it harder than it should be and discourages the proper use of semantic styling. A price to pay for emulating advanced typewriter as default UI setting :(
    - alerighi 5y ago
      Are there even other UIs for Word? Interesting, I didn't know that. But I think that we still are talking about another "point and click" interface. The difference between Word and LaTeX is that the first one is a graphical WYSIWYG editor, while the second one is a markup language. To me they are not even comparable, It's like comparing Wordpress with HTML.
      - p_l 5y ago
        You can switch to logical view (I don't remember the exact name, "conspect"?) which doesn't apply 95% of styling and reflects hierarchy of the document + makes it easier to apply semantic styles en masse. A big problem is that it's simply easier most of the time to hit Ctrl-B rather than select a style named "emphasis" and so on :(

martin8412 5y ago

What a complete garbage paper. They can’t draw those conclusions from their data. The data is not representative of real world use.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

timwaagh 5y ago

I don't think anybody truly disputes the conclusions in the paper. Word is faster. LaTeX can make you feel like a pro. I fell in love with it at first. I wanted to do everything in it. It is indeed great software. LaTeX also does a lot of things to get text to look nice, though Word doesn't look bad either. I don't think the fact that figures needed correcting is much of an argument. At least in Word it's possible to move figures around around easily. In LaTeX the compiler places it for you and there's little you can do about it. Personally the dogmatic choice of LaTeX is one of those things I disliked about the academic world. They deliberately choose the most difficult way when easier ways are available with few compromises.

DoctorOW 5y ago
I think it's generally agreed upon that LaTeX is more difficult to use than Word for basic documents, but as requirements grow more advanced it slowly becomes the other way around. I think the point of that cutoff is often exaggerated in the academic world. To put it cynically, I think there's somewhat of an ego boost in thinking one's writing is so advanced that they must use special tools to express it. That's not the conscious thought process, just an explanation for the allure of overcomplicating things.