5 ms·

It's damning that there no truly functional grammar or spellchecker for latex, even ignoring crazy things that can be done with macros. If some billionaire wan

by xavxav 4y ago

It's damning that there no truly functional grammar or spellchecker for latex, even ignoring crazy things that can be done with macros. If some billionaire wanted to 'move the needle' and change society for the better I think building a truly better latex would be worth it. Each year some of the most brilliant people in the world sacrifice on the altar of latex, that could instead be spent on more productive research.

privong 4y ago
> Each year some of the most brilliant people in the world sacrifice on the altar of latex, that could instead be spent on more productive research. Perhaps. But I'd wager that more time is lost to the bureaucracy of universities and grant administration than to fighting LaTeX quirks. I'm not sure that "fixing" (La)TeX would result in a noticeable improvement in research that could be done.
TheRealPomax 4y ago
I'd like to know what a "better LaTeX" means, and how that would move the needle, given that the only things you can't easily do in modern (Xe)LaTeX are things that you shouldn't be using TeX itself for in the first place, but have other tools do so you can simply embed their output. Especially given the availability of WYSIWYG-esque editors with "one-click" compile buttons that run all the nonsense that we used to have to do by hand back in the dark days of "you want a GUI? Get out of my office, you simp" paired with the modern "just install missing packages without asking me, that's the whole point: I do the writing, you make that frictionless."
- convolvatron 4y ago
  I have a difficult time with this comment. everyone I know who uses Latex including myself is painfully aware of its shortcomings and fairly steep learning curve. maybe the graphical environments eliminate some of the pain around embedding images, or using wrapped figures. but there is no way they manage to get around the fundamental lack of composibility. that sinking feeling you get when you just add one more thing or try to put an X inside of Y and the whole thing falls over in a pile.
  - TheRealPomax 4y ago
    As someone who's written multilingual books with custom typesetting needs in it, the learning curve can definitely be steep, but as someone who's also written regular old papers in it, the learning curve is "use our template", and that's kind of it. The only real learning curve is how to write maths, as long as you don't fall in the trap of trying to make LaTeX do graphics. For the love of all that is sane, use the tools best suited for that job instead. For everything else tex.stackexchange.com already has at least three posts covering any "how do I..." you might ever have. And as someone who's even written packages: ...you're going to end up needing low level TeX, and TeX is insane, don't try to write packages. It's a world of hurt. (But then most people will never need to write their own packages) Can you talk more about what you mean with the lack of composibility? Or of course link to some page(s) that makes that point?
- ilayn 4y ago
  Proper programming language that is not meant to carry old silliness such as "oh back in the day memory was important so you have 256 registers" or "fixed point arithmetic should be fine" or "it's meant for typesetting don't use it for complicated stuff so a figure can float 15 pages whatever". We have PDF as de facto media for handling output and text files for holding the source files. Better TeX means we are not using an archaic madness to go from Txt to PDF but able to utilize modern IT tools. TeX is just old and died decades ago. Academia is holding it as a hostage because papers... Disclaimer: ex-academician and a low key maintainer of TikZ Edit: TeX as a language is horrific exactly what you would you expect from a computer scientist so it's not that Knuth is to blame, it's the rest that didn't get his vision such as academia still leeching off of it instead of using taxpayer money to generate a proper tool
  - TheRealPomax 4y ago
    So... XeLaTeX? Which has been around for over 15 years now? Modern unicode support out of the box? check. Compiles to PDF instead of DVI because obviously? Check. Normal system font support? very check. More than 256 registers? "what the fuck is a register and why would you ever need to care, it's not 1980 anymore." Equal disclaimer: low-key maintainer of ucharclasses.
    - ilayn 4y ago
      No difference, same TeX behavior with font support. Using system fonts cannot be a highlight of a tool in 2020s. Mostdef not modern. Also cough... "xdvi"... Cough
- choeger 4y ago
  OP mentioned spellchecking. That alone would save much money. One cannot do spellchecking in a (La)TeX "document" because one cannot parse it.

by xavxav 4y ago

privong 4y ago

> Each year some of the most brilliant people in the world sacrifice on the altar of latex, that could instead be spent on more productive research. Perhaps. But I'd wager that more time is lost to the bureaucracy of universities and grant administration than to fighting LaTeX quirks. I'm not sure that "fixing" (La)TeX would result in a noticeable improvement in research that could be done.

TheRealPomax 4y ago

I'd like to know what a "better LaTeX" means, and how that would move the needle, given that the only things you can't easily do in modern (Xe)LaTeX are things that you shouldn't be using TeX itself for in the first place, but have other tools do so you can simply embed their output. Especially given the availability of WYSIWYG-esque editors with "one-click" compile buttons that run all the nonsense that we used to have to do by hand back in the dark days of "you want a GUI? Get out of my office, you simp" paired with the modern "just install missing packages without asking me, that's the whole point: I do the writing, you make that frictionless."

convolvatron 4y ago
I have a difficult time with this comment. everyone I know who uses Latex including myself is painfully aware of its shortcomings and fairly steep learning curve. maybe the graphical environments eliminate some of the pain around embedding images, or using wrapped figures. but there is no way they manage to get around the fundamental lack of composibility. that sinking feeling you get when you just add one more thing or try to put an X inside of Y and the whole thing falls over in a pile.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  As someone who's written multilingual books with custom typesetting needs in it, the learning curve can definitely be steep, but as someone who's also written regular old papers in it, the learning curve is "use our template", and that's kind of it. The only real learning curve is how to write maths, as long as you don't fall in the trap of trying to make LaTeX do graphics. For the love of all that is sane, use the tools best suited for that job instead. For everything else tex.stackexchange.com already has at least three posts covering any "how do I..." you might ever have. And as someone who's even written packages: ...you're going to end up needing low level TeX, and TeX is insane, don't try to write packages. It's a world of hurt. (But then most people will never need to write their own packages) Can you talk more about what you mean with the lack of composibility? Or of course link to some page(s) that makes that point?
ilayn 4y ago
Proper programming language that is not meant to carry old silliness such as "oh back in the day memory was important so you have 256 registers" or "fixed point arithmetic should be fine" or "it's meant for typesetting don't use it for complicated stuff so a figure can float 15 pages whatever". We have PDF as de facto media for handling output and text files for holding the source files. Better TeX means we are not using an archaic madness to go from Txt to PDF but able to utilize modern IT tools. TeX is just old and died decades ago. Academia is holding it as a hostage because papers... Disclaimer: ex-academician and a low key maintainer of TikZ Edit: TeX as a language is horrific exactly what you would you expect from a computer scientist so it's not that Knuth is to blame, it's the rest that didn't get his vision such as academia still leeching off of it instead of using taxpayer money to generate a proper tool
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  So... XeLaTeX? Which has been around for over 15 years now? Modern unicode support out of the box? check. Compiles to PDF instead of DVI because obviously? Check. Normal system font support? very check. More than 256 registers? "what the fuck is a register and why would you ever need to care, it's not 1980 anymore." Equal disclaimer: low-key maintainer of ucharclasses.
  - ilayn 4y ago
    No difference, same TeX behavior with font support. Using system fonts cannot be a highlight of a tool in 2020s. Mostdef not modern. Also cough... "xdvi"... Cough
choeger 4y ago
OP mentioned spellchecking. That alone would save much money. One cannot do spellchecking in a (La)TeX "document" because one cannot parse it.