7 ms·

I have a question: if what you have to write in order to create your beautiful and aesthetically pleasing proof, and thereby "establish your ethos and character

I have a question: if what you have to write in order to create your beautiful and aesthetically pleasing proof, and thereby "establish your ethos and character" (presumably as a righteous and good), is an ugly and fragile instance of a poorly designed, inherently unreadable, archaic language that embodies none of the characteristics you are after, can the result really be "a work of art that combines both the precision and creativity of your logical thinking, as well as the elegance of a beautifully typeset writing?"

contravariant 4y ago
Well no, but LaTeX should be backwards compatible with TeX so there's always that option.
fanpu 4y ago
Great question! Is there a specific domain/example that you have in mind? I don't think people intentionally use archaic language if their goal is to educate and enlighten, but in papers it is quite common for unnecessary jargon to be peppered in, which while probably obvious to the author, makes it hard for people new to the field to break in.
- fanpu 4y ago
  Realized I misunderstood your question. IMO the main design problem with LaTeX from a usage-standpoint is that there are too many ways of achieving the same thing, and oftentimes none of them is a clear winner. It's still the best option for a usable, programmable typesetting language that we have (i.e writing for-loops to draw structured graphs in TikZ...)
  - titzer 4y ago
    My personal beef with LaTeX, other than the utterly atrocious syntax, is that it a.) endlessly barfs on your terminal during its normal operation and b.) does not respond to normal terminal interaction upon an error (wth is it expecting? I interactively edit and correct mistakes!?). So it's scroll blindness and flailing all the way, a kludgy, rickety mess. Not to mention its utter mess of a package management system.
    - w4rh4wk5 4y ago
      For the terminal output issue, consider latexrun https://github.com/aclements/latexrun https://github.com/aclements/latexrun
    - tephra 4y ago
      It should be noted that TeX wa s of course designed to actually be interactive and stop letting you fix errors. I went through the texbook by Knuth last year and my eyes were opened (also note that I am an incurable (La)TeX fan so my opinion is biased)
atlintots 4y ago
In this case, of course. The final product (the document), once produced, is much more independent of the underlying code than "normal" software. Once the document has been produced, it doesn't really matter whether you used Word or LaTeX or ConTeXt or whatever.
- w4rh4wk5 4y ago
  Until you have to change, quote, or re-use parts of it, in another document.
  - fanpu 4y ago
    There are tools (i.e https://mathpix.com/ https://mathpix.com/) that actually does a pretty great job at LaTeX OCR, although you'll need to re-create labels and the like. I was pleasantly surprised that it replicated alignments & chose the right font faces while using it.
ivansavz 4y ago
> RE: ugly and fragile instance of a poorly designed, inherently unreadable, archaic language That's a lot of hate for LaTeX, and some of it is warranted, but you have to think of the results, not the source... It's not the source code that people are in love with, but the result (rendered PDF or via MathJax/KaTeX on the web). The "ugly" markup syntax allows you to produce beautiful, versatile, well designed, readable, and modern math equations. As for the latex source code, I think it's redeeming qualities are the fact that it is a standard (with over 40+ years track record). It's definitely not readable, or user-friendly (try adding or forgetting a single }), but people seem to get used to it after a while. Another thing I could say in defence of tex syntax, is that it is necessary complexity. If it wasn't the backslash-macros and curly braces, we would need some other way to express structure in equations, so the same complexity would be present in a new look.
- zzless 4y ago
  What a great summary! Unfortunately, many discussions of TeX vs alternatives are somewhat thin on details and are instead trading on emotions. As you mentioned in your comment, the choices made by Knuth are far from random. He even made it possible for anyone to change them! Not many people using TeX know that the choice of the backslash as an 'escape' character may be easily changed. Even the necessity of curly braces may be avoided using carefully designed macros. LaTeX took a different path but it is only one possible choice. It is telling that no real alternatives have emerged during the 40+ years of TeX's existence.
  - ogogmad 4y ago
    Asciidoc, TexMacs, LyX, reStructuredText, Markdown (admittedly, only ish). None of them have become the standard. But some of the ones above - though excluding Markdown - are a complete replacement. Actually, even Markdown stands a chance if supplemented with enough HTML and CSS. HTML and CSS have practically replaced most non-maths uses of Latex.
    - cratermoon 4y ago
      How many of those rely on LaTeX syntax extensions to render equations?
rsfern 4y ago
Generally agreed, writing should be a tool that supports clear thinking, and a giant mess of unreadable markup is not amenable for thinking. I’m still reading through this post, but it seems to have some great advice for making that situation at least a little better, like the trick with mathtools to make paired braces more readable I collaborate with some academics that strongly prefer to do all writing and editing in MS Word, but I’ve personally found that to be a lot worse for supporting clear thinking, especially if any math is involved
DocTomoe 4y ago
I am still looking for a text markup system that gives me good PDFs with DTP-grade text setting and and is plain-text, so I can work with standard version control programs. Right now, only TeX/LaTeX comes close. AsciiDoctor is not doing citations well, Markdown is basically a mess which differs in implementation, also footnotes and citations. Do you have something better?
- chaoxu 4y ago
  How is Quarto? It uses Pandoc Markdown.
  - elashri 4y ago
    There was a discussion about that last year [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042831
- hanche 4y ago
  I think (though I can’t find a reference) that Knuth hoped that some of the algorithms developed for TeX, such as the hyphenation and line breaking algorithms, would catch on and be used by other, non-TeX typesetting software. If that has ever happened, I a unaware of any examples. That’s a pity.
- gglitch 4y ago
  I don’t have an opinion about whether they’re better or worse, but have you tried groff or heirloom troff?
carapace 4y ago
You're crapping on a thing that Knuth and friends made and gave you for free. Are you about to go write something better?
- walnutclosefarm 4y ago
  I don't think the fact that Knuth wrote it and gave it away has anything to do with the question I was asking. If anything, the fact that it's free may contribute to its ubiquity and longevity, notwithstanding its poor design and other undesirable characteristics. But none of that was the point of my question. The article on which the original post was made was effusive about how elegant and beautiful LaTeX output is, and how virtuous an author is for creating such works of art. It almost made it an obligation of anyone who writes math to love the look of LaTex. I'm asking, notwithstanding the output, if the input and process are a mess, is this really such a virtuous thing? I personally think not. Obviously, some others disagree.
semi-extrinsic 4y ago
LaTeX is robust enough and has a consistent enough interface that with some macros and snippets you can take real-time notes of people giving graduate level math lectures on a blackboard. If LaTeX is ugly, it's in the same sense as APL is "ugly".
Shorel 4y ago
As ugly as it may appear to you, it is so much more readable than MathML Core. TeX is, in fact, still better than all the alternatives to represent mathematical equations in plain text created so far.
- charlieyu1 4y ago
  MathML is not a writing format, it is an output format that is designed to be machine readable. And I think most people complain about the non-equation parts of LaTeX.
- patrick451 4y ago
  I guess readability is in the eye of the beholder, but I find latex much more readable than html and usually more readable than reStructuredText. Markdown might be more readable, but it's so limited it shouldn't even be in conversation.
KMnO4 4y ago
I find writing LaTex is like painting a beautiful sunset using pig’s blood. The results are beautiful, but don’t look behind the canvas or too deeply into the artist’s mental health following that.
generationP 4y ago
TeX is not unreadable. It's hard to automatically parse, but it is easy to read by a human, unless the authors have been piling hacks and too-smart-by-half constructs. The latter case happens every once in a while but is generally pretty rare.

contravariant 4y ago

Well no, but LaTeX should be backwards compatible with TeX so there's always that option.

fanpu 4y ago

Great question! Is there a specific domain/example that you have in mind? I don't think people intentionally use archaic language if their goal is to educate and enlighten, but in papers it is quite common for unnecessary jargon to be peppered in, which while probably obvious to the author, makes it hard for people new to the field to break in.

fanpu 4y ago
Realized I misunderstood your question. IMO the main design problem with LaTeX from a usage-standpoint is that there are too many ways of achieving the same thing, and oftentimes none of them is a clear winner. It's still the best option for a usable, programmable typesetting language that we have (i.e writing for-loops to draw structured graphs in TikZ...)
- titzer 4y ago
  My personal beef with LaTeX, other than the utterly atrocious syntax, is that it a.) endlessly barfs on your terminal during its normal operation and b.) does not respond to normal terminal interaction upon an error (wth is it expecting? I interactively edit and correct mistakes!?). So it's scroll blindness and flailing all the way, a kludgy, rickety mess. Not to mention its utter mess of a package management system.
  - w4rh4wk5 4y ago
    For the terminal output issue, consider latexrun https://github.com/aclements/latexrun https://github.com/aclements/latexrun
  - tephra 4y ago
    It should be noted that TeX wa s of course designed to actually be interactive and stop letting you fix errors. I went through the texbook by Knuth last year and my eyes were opened (also note that I am an incurable (La)TeX fan so my opinion is biased)

atlintots 4y ago

In this case, of course. The final product (the document), once produced, is much more independent of the underlying code than "normal" software. Once the document has been produced, it doesn't really matter whether you used Word or LaTeX or ConTeXt or whatever.

w4rh4wk5 4y ago
Until you have to change, quote, or re-use parts of it, in another document.
- fanpu 4y ago
  There are tools (i.e https://mathpix.com/ https://mathpix.com/) that actually does a pretty great job at LaTeX OCR, although you'll need to re-create labels and the like. I was pleasantly surprised that it replicated alignments & chose the right font faces while using it.

ivansavz 4y ago

> RE: ugly and fragile instance of a poorly designed, inherently unreadable, archaic language That's a lot of hate for LaTeX, and some of it is warranted, but you have to think of the results, not the source... It's not the source code that people are in love with, but the result (rendered PDF or via MathJax/KaTeX on the web). The "ugly" markup syntax allows you to produce beautiful, versatile, well designed, readable, and modern math equations. As for the latex source code, I think it's redeeming qualities are the fact that it is a standard (with over 40+ years track record). It's definitely not readable, or user-friendly (try adding or forgetting a single }), but people seem to get used to it after a while. Another thing I could say in defence of tex syntax, is that it is necessary complexity. If it wasn't the backslash-macros and curly braces, we would need some other way to express structure in equations, so the same complexity would be present in a new look.

zzless 4y ago
What a great summary! Unfortunately, many discussions of TeX vs alternatives are somewhat thin on details and are instead trading on emotions. As you mentioned in your comment, the choices made by Knuth are far from random. He even made it possible for anyone to change them! Not many people using TeX know that the choice of the backslash as an 'escape' character may be easily changed. Even the necessity of curly braces may be avoided using carefully designed macros. LaTeX took a different path but it is only one possible choice. It is telling that no real alternatives have emerged during the 40+ years of TeX's existence.
- ogogmad 4y ago
  Asciidoc, TexMacs, LyX, reStructuredText, Markdown (admittedly, only ish). None of them have become the standard. But some of the ones above - though excluding Markdown - are a complete replacement. Actually, even Markdown stands a chance if supplemented with enough HTML and CSS. HTML and CSS have practically replaced most non-maths uses of Latex.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    How many of those rely on LaTeX syntax extensions to render equations?

rsfern 4y ago

Generally agreed, writing should be a tool that supports clear thinking, and a giant mess of unreadable markup is not amenable for thinking. I’m still reading through this post, but it seems to have some great advice for making that situation at least a little better, like the trick with mathtools to make paired braces more readable I collaborate with some academics that strongly prefer to do all writing and editing in MS Word, but I’ve personally found that to be a lot worse for supporting clear thinking, especially if any math is involved

DocTomoe 4y ago

I am still looking for a text markup system that gives me good PDFs with DTP-grade text setting and and is plain-text, so I can work with standard version control programs. Right now, only TeX/LaTeX comes close. AsciiDoctor is not doing citations well, Markdown is basically a mess which differs in implementation, also footnotes and citations. Do you have something better?

chaoxu 4y ago
How is Quarto? It uses Pandoc Markdown.
- elashri 4y ago
  There was a discussion about that last year [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042831
hanche 4y ago
I think (though I can’t find a reference) that Knuth hoped that some of the algorithms developed for TeX, such as the hyphenation and line breaking algorithms, would catch on and be used by other, non-TeX typesetting software. If that has ever happened, I a unaware of any examples. That’s a pity.
gglitch 4y ago
I don’t have an opinion about whether they’re better or worse, but have you tried groff or heirloom troff?

carapace 4y ago

You're crapping on a thing that Knuth and friends made and gave you for free. Are you about to go write something better?

walnutclosefarm 4y ago
I don't think the fact that Knuth wrote it and gave it away has anything to do with the question I was asking. If anything, the fact that it's free may contribute to its ubiquity and longevity, notwithstanding its poor design and other undesirable characteristics. But none of that was the point of my question. The article on which the original post was made was effusive about how elegant and beautiful LaTeX output is, and how virtuous an author is for creating such works of art. It almost made it an obligation of anyone who writes math to love the look of LaTex. I'm asking, notwithstanding the output, if the input and process are a mess, is this really such a virtuous thing? I personally think not. Obviously, some others disagree.

semi-extrinsic 4y ago

LaTeX is robust enough and has a consistent enough interface that with some macros and snippets you can take real-time notes of people giving graduate level math lectures on a blackboard. If LaTeX is ugly, it's in the same sense as APL is "ugly".

Shorel 4y ago

As ugly as it may appear to you, it is so much more readable than MathML Core. TeX is, in fact, still better than all the alternatives to represent mathematical equations in plain text created so far.

charlieyu1 4y ago
MathML is not a writing format, it is an output format that is designed to be machine readable. And I think most people complain about the non-equation parts of LaTeX.
patrick451 4y ago
I guess readability is in the eye of the beholder, but I find latex much more readable than html and usually more readable than reStructuredText. Markdown might be more readable, but it's so limited it shouldn't even be in conversation.

KMnO4 4y ago

I find writing LaTex is like painting a beautiful sunset using pig’s blood. The results are beautiful, but don’t look behind the canvas or too deeply into the artist’s mental health following that.

generationP 4y ago

TeX is not unreadable. It's hard to automatically parse, but it is easy to read by a human, unless the authors have been piling hacks and too-smart-by-half constructs. The latter case happens every once in a while but is generally pretty rare.