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Give me your thesis source code, I will just remove one bracket from your complex equations Let’s see how many hours you will spend to fix it. The compiler wil

Give me your thesis source code, I will just remove one bracket from your complex equations Let’s see how many hours you will spend to fix it. The compiler will just tell you “out of memory error” with no line number. Good luck finding it. Latex and its tooling ecosystem are atrocious for productivity. For a type system that promises “just write, forget about formatting” the effort it requires to get document formatting right is insane.

rekado 4y ago
Can confirm. The error messages bear little resemblance to the actual problem. Just yesterday I tried to apply Texinfo patches to support generating Chinese PDFs via XeTeX. The first error I got was an out-of-memory error, which was solved only by adding a missing font file. The next error I got is "Undefined control sequence." and there's nothing wrong with the sources. I'm maintaining a modular installation of TeX Live for GNU Guix for years now, and understanding the errors doesn't ever seem to get easier. My experience with lout (another typesetting system) has been a lot smoother, even though by default it does not support Unicode. (It's possible with some configuration.)
pvaldes 4y ago
> I will just remove one bracket from your complex equations Let’s see how many hours you will spend to fix it. I would measure the fix time in minutes, even seconds, but not in hours. Emacs would help with that. Moving your \end{document} backwards would find the problem also.
- treis 4y ago
  Challenge issued and accepted. Now all that remains is choosing the time and manner of battle.
  - pvaldes 4y ago
    Challenges are for low-rank influencers and people willing to prove to strangers how freaking smart or popular they are, or how fast they can rap. To be honest, I couldn't care less about that. Knowing that it can be done and how to do it is more than enough for me. Nothing to learn or gain jumping in that vanity wrestling ring.
kkfx 4y ago
IF the code is bad written yes, that's happen. If is well handwritten OR for math generated by come tools, like just a Maxima tex(...) call it not really true except for very complex PGF/TikZ graphics, who happen to be hard anyway on any existing tool... Honestly I think too many are just in hurry and not care anyway about formatting like "it's an useless waste of time", it's not and we need often time with a tool NOT JUST to produce an output but to reason on what we are writing...
bee_rider 4y ago
I love LaTeX... have written class notes, tried to get work to switch their documentation over to use it (unsuccessful)... but the errors are truly useless. Compilation should be done every time you save (use the preview continuously option in latexmk), and you should save every sentence or so. Then at least you know where the new bugs are.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rrwo 4y ago
I've never had typos take hours to fix. But then again the text editor I use has syntax and bracket highlighting.

rekado 4y ago

Can confirm. The error messages bear little resemblance to the actual problem. Just yesterday I tried to apply Texinfo patches to support generating Chinese PDFs via XeTeX. The first error I got was an out-of-memory error, which was solved only by adding a missing font file. The next error I got is "Undefined control sequence." and there's nothing wrong with the sources. I'm maintaining a modular installation of TeX Live for GNU Guix for years now, and understanding the errors doesn't ever seem to get easier. My experience with lout (another typesetting system) has been a lot smoother, even though by default it does not support Unicode. (It's possible with some configuration.)

pvaldes 4y ago

> I will just remove one bracket from your complex equations Let’s see how many hours you will spend to fix it. I would measure the fix time in minutes, even seconds, but not in hours. Emacs would help with that. Moving your \end{document} backwards would find the problem also.

treis 4y ago
Challenge issued and accepted. Now all that remains is choosing the time and manner of battle.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  Challenges are for low-rank influencers and people willing to prove to strangers how freaking smart or popular they are, or how fast they can rap. To be honest, I couldn't care less about that. Knowing that it can be done and how to do it is more than enough for me. Nothing to learn or gain jumping in that vanity wrestling ring.

kkfx 4y ago

IF the code is bad written yes, that's happen. If is well handwritten OR for math generated by come tools, like just a Maxima tex(...) call it not really true except for very complex PGF/TikZ graphics, who happen to be hard anyway on any existing tool... Honestly I think too many are just in hurry and not care anyway about formatting like "it's an useless waste of time", it's not and we need often time with a tool NOT JUST to produce an output but to reason on what we are writing...

bee_rider 4y ago

I love LaTeX... have written class notes, tried to get work to switch their documentation over to use it (unsuccessful)... but the errors are truly useless. Compilation should be done every time you save (use the preview continuously option in latexmk), and you should save every sentence or so. Then at least you know where the new bugs are.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rrwo 4y ago

I've never had typos take hours to fix. But then again the text editor I use has syntax and bracket highlighting.