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I think it comes down to whether the complexity of TeX/LaTeX is essential or accidental. My feeling is, more than half of the complexity is essential (typesetti

by js8 4y ago

I think it comes down to whether the complexity of TeX/LaTeX is essential or accidental. My feeling is, more than half of the complexity is essential (typesetting is, like human grammar, full of obscure rules and exceptions), and therefore, it simply doesn't pay off to anyone to rewrite the system (not to mention, the more essential complexity is in a given problem, the more accidental complexity you're going to accrue). There has been unsuccessful attempts to remove the accidental complexity, like Lout. It is very hard. If you limited your requirements to "do not have complete control over typesetting", as I suggested, then lot of essential complexity (of complex typesetting rules) could be converted to accidental complexity (simplified typesetting), and then such a system would be easier to create. Though such a thing probably already exists in systems like LyX, MS Word, LibreOffice. They can do typesetting with vastly simplified rules (especially of equations).

bradrn 4y ago
> I think it comes down to whether the complexity of TeX/LaTeX is essential or accidental. I tend to agree with this, but I do think quite a bit of the complexity in LaTeX is accidental. For instance, the existence of numerous packages for basic typesetting tasks, none of which entirely work with each other, are a clear example of unnecessary complexity. Also, as a macro-expansion language, the nature of TeX itself makes some things more difficult than they need to be — consider basic arithmetic, to take just one example. Furthermore, I’ll note that age really is a big factor here: there are many things we want to do today in modern, computer-based typesetting which were much less important back when TeX was invented. For instance, in a recent presentation I wanted to make two images transparent and overlay them; I had to drag in TikZ (quite a bulky package!) to do so much as modify their opacity. Similar examples are numerous, ranging from hyperlinks to vector graphics to comments to animations. Of course, typesetting is a complex task, and a typesetting program is never going to be simple. But I feel that fixing the above problems would at least make it somewhat easier than it currently is with LaTeX. > There has been unsuccessful attempts to remove the accidental complexity, like Lout. It is very hard. I’ve never used Lout, or even heard of it before now; could you expand on where it ran into problems?

by js8 4y ago

bradrn 4y ago

> I think it comes down to whether the complexity of TeX/LaTeX is essential or accidental. I tend to agree with this, but I do think quite a bit of the complexity in LaTeX is accidental. For instance, the existence of numerous packages for basic typesetting tasks, none of which entirely work with each other, are a clear example of unnecessary complexity. Also, as a macro-expansion language, the nature of TeX itself makes some things more difficult than they need to be — consider basic arithmetic, to take just one example. Furthermore, I’ll note that age really is a big factor here: there are many things we want to do today in modern, computer-based typesetting which were much less important back when TeX was invented. For instance, in a recent presentation I wanted to make two images transparent and overlay them; I had to drag in TikZ (quite a bulky package!) to do so much as modify their opacity. Similar examples are numerous, ranging from hyperlinks to vector graphics to comments to animations. Of course, typesetting is a complex task, and a typesetting program is never going to be simple. But I feel that fixing the above problems would at least make it somewhat easier than it currently is with LaTeX. > There has been unsuccessful attempts to remove the accidental complexity, like Lout. It is very hard. I’ve never used Lout, or even heard of it before now; could you expand on where it ran into problems?