4 ms·

> What You See Is Pretty Close To What Other Tools Can Get This is a template for MS Word letting you “simulate” the look of a LaTeX document. Use pandoc to co

> What You See Is Pretty Close To What Other Tools Can Get This is a template for MS Word letting you “simulate” the look of a LaTeX document. Use pandoc to convert to actual LaTeX source.

someweirdperson 4y ago
All that's missing is a word-macro that hijacks the export-to-pdf button to run pandoc and pdflatex.
Maursault 4y ago
I could not know for certain, but from my experience converting document formats, such as pdf to doc or html or what have you, I suspect that the converted document will be quite different and include quite a lot of inscrutable noise compared to a document originally created in LaTeX, even if the output appears similar or the same. I've always been in awe of users of LaTeX because they almost always have another discipline, usually academic and with years if not decades behind them, yet in order to publish they effectively need to become a typesetter, which is an entirely separate discipline in itself. Everyone else just hires the professional typesetter or page designer (probably provided by a commercial printer, marketing or design firm), but academics don't seem to have that convenience available to them. Imagine if in order to drive anywhere you had to design and build your own car for every trip.
- eclipticplane 4y ago
  From a friend who's a mathematics professor: "If I had to fight with LaTeX to get here, my students will damned well learn it, too."
- pge 4y ago
  or LaTeX is a fun and nerdy distraction from their work (speaking from experience here…)
- mattkrause 4y ago
  The rest of academia is like that too. Depending on the day, I’m some combination of an embedded developer, zoo keeper, surgeon, (data) scientist, manager, writer/illustrator, accountant, and carnival barker. For articles, LaTeX is not even that bad: most journals want you to stick close to their own article class. Posters and talks are the real timesuck.

> What You See Is Pretty Close To What Other Tools Can Get This is a template for MS Word letting you “simulate” the look of a LaTeX document. Use pandoc to convert to actual LaTeX source.

someweirdperson 4y ago

All that's missing is a word-macro that hijacks the export-to-pdf button to run pandoc and pdflatex.

Maursault 4y ago

I could not know for certain, but from my experience converting document formats, such as pdf to doc or html or what have you, I suspect that the converted document will be quite different and include quite a lot of inscrutable noise compared to a document originally created in LaTeX, even if the output appears similar or the same. I've always been in awe of users of LaTeX because they almost always have another discipline, usually academic and with years if not decades behind them, yet in order to publish they effectively need to become a typesetter, which is an entirely separate discipline in itself. Everyone else just hires the professional typesetter or page designer (probably provided by a commercial printer, marketing or design firm), but academics don't seem to have that convenience available to them. Imagine if in order to drive anywhere you had to design and build your own car for every trip.

eclipticplane 4y ago
From a friend who's a mathematics professor: "If I had to fight with LaTeX to get here, my students will damned well learn it, too."
pge 4y ago
or LaTeX is a fun and nerdy distraction from their work (speaking from experience here…)
mattkrause 4y ago
The rest of academia is like that too. Depending on the day, I’m some combination of an embedded developer, zoo keeper, surgeon, (data) scientist, manager, writer/illustrator, accountant, and carnival barker. For articles, LaTeX is not even that bad: most journals want you to stick close to their own article class. Posters and talks are the real timesuck.