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While LaTeX's future replacement could certainly learn a lot from modern languages like Markdown, I hope that the creators will use as much rigor in designing t

While LaTeX's future replacement could certainly learn a lot from modern languages like Markdown, I hope that the creators will use as much rigor in designing the typesetting system as Knuth did. Part of LaTeX's success was the absolutely beautiful documents it can make with nothing but a personal computer. For example, to compute line breaks, it solves an optimization problem over the whole page.

taeric 3y ago
Oddly, I would cite Knuth's rigor in stability as much as in rigor of algorithm choice and creation. Specifically, TeX still works well today because of deliberate choices to not break things. He is well aware of modern techniques for many of the things that people complain about. He likes that he can still build every one of his documents today, with no concerns over things having "moved on to better ways."
thangalin 3y ago
> modern languages like Markdown Markdown was created in 2004. From the creator: > ... the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email. Email goes back to 1965, though I suspect Markdown's influence stems from the more widely adopted email usage of the 1990s. I'm not sure if I'd call Markdown "modern". Quite popular though! > Part of LaTeX's success was the absolutely beautiful documents it can make with nothing but a personal computer. I'd say that was TeX's success, with LaTeX bolted on later to greatly improve TeX's extensibility. Keep in mind, there are a number of TeX-centric implementations beyond LaTeX. For example, my fork of NTS, called KeenType, is a pure Java version of TeX that can typeset beautifully and has at its core Knuth's original TeX files. I specifically avoided integrating LaTeX. https://github.com/DaveJarvis/KeenType/tree/main/tex/src/main/resources/base https://github.com/DaveJarvis/KeenType/tree/main/tex/src/mai... My Markdown text editor, KeenWrite, uses KeenType to preview math in documents. https://github.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/blob/main/docs/screenshots.md#equations https://github.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/blob/main/docs/scree... When exporting to PDF, KeenWrite uses ConTeXt to typeset the final document. ConTeXt being another TeX-based system. This is the reason why KeenWrite only uses TeX: to give users the ability to choose what TeX flavour to use for typesetting the PDF. https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page
- coldtea 3y ago
  2004 is still modern era of computing - and far more recent than TeX which is half a century ago. And, creation date aside, its wide adoption is even more recent.
WillAdams 3y ago
There is hope that/ongoing research into the algorithm (so that it) will be extended beyond the paragraph/page and will allow the sort of optimizations/adjustments which are necessary. In almost 4 decades of typesetting, I've had a chapter come out exactly right, requiring no adjustment exactly _once_ (fastest 40 minutes of my life) --- the usual approach is after: - importing the text and all the images, paging everything with the defaults one has to: - check the last page --- is it reasonably full? is the page which it is ending on acceptable --- would it be better to gain or lose a page? - from the beginning, check each image/table --- where do they fall relative to the first reference? What needs to move to what page? Make gross adjustments to make that happen where possible (resizing images/tables/tweaking placement, if the book design allows, change image/table type/appearance to adjust things - see where one falls at the end of the chapter --- last page full enough? Would it be desirable to gain/lose a page? - go back to the beginning, begin fine tuning each page/spread --- are there any paragraphs which don't look nice? (setting too tight/loose, rivers, stacks, &c., adjust as needed), do the bottom lines line up? adjust paragraph specs/image size to make them line up (keeping in mind if one wants to gain/lose a page) --- do this for each page/spread - check the last page --- repeat any of the above adjustments as necessary --- sometimes, while one might want to gain a page, a tighter setting losing a page looks sufficiently better that it's worth un-doing all the tweaking an re-setting thus
coldtea 3y ago
The problem I see is not rigor, it's more that there's no realistic chance we'll ever see that next system available in our lifetimes...

taeric 3y ago

Oddly, I would cite Knuth's rigor in stability as much as in rigor of algorithm choice and creation. Specifically, TeX still works well today because of deliberate choices to not break things. He is well aware of modern techniques for many of the things that people complain about. He likes that he can still build every one of his documents today, with no concerns over things having "moved on to better ways."

thangalin 3y ago

> modern languages like Markdown Markdown was created in 2004. From the creator: > ... the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email. Email goes back to 1965, though I suspect Markdown's influence stems from the more widely adopted email usage of the 1990s. I'm not sure if I'd call Markdown "modern". Quite popular though! > Part of LaTeX's success was the absolutely beautiful documents it can make with nothing but a personal computer. I'd say that was TeX's success, with LaTeX bolted on later to greatly improve TeX's extensibility. Keep in mind, there are a number of TeX-centric implementations beyond LaTeX. For example, my fork of NTS, called KeenType, is a pure Java version of TeX that can typeset beautifully and has at its core Knuth's original TeX files. I specifically avoided integrating LaTeX. https://github.com/DaveJarvis/KeenType/tree/main/tex/src/main/resources/base https://github.com/DaveJarvis/KeenType/tree/main/tex/src/mai... My Markdown text editor, KeenWrite, uses KeenType to preview math in documents. https://github.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/blob/main/docs/screenshots.md#equations https://github.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/blob/main/docs/scree... When exporting to PDF, KeenWrite uses ConTeXt to typeset the final document. ConTeXt being another TeX-based system. This is the reason why KeenWrite only uses TeX: to give users the ability to choose what TeX flavour to use for typesetting the PDF. https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page

coldtea 3y ago
2004 is still modern era of computing - and far more recent than TeX which is half a century ago. And, creation date aside, its wide adoption is even more recent.

WillAdams 3y ago

There is hope that/ongoing research into the algorithm (so that it) will be extended beyond the paragraph/page and will allow the sort of optimizations/adjustments which are necessary. In almost 4 decades of typesetting, I've had a chapter come out exactly right, requiring no adjustment exactly _once_ (fastest 40 minutes of my life) --- the usual approach is after: - importing the text and all the images, paging everything with the defaults one has to: - check the last page --- is it reasonably full? is the page which it is ending on acceptable --- would it be better to gain or lose a page? - from the beginning, check each image/table --- where do they fall relative to the first reference? What needs to move to what page? Make gross adjustments to make that happen where possible (resizing images/tables/tweaking placement, if the book design allows, change image/table type/appearance to adjust things - see where one falls at the end of the chapter --- last page full enough? Would it be desirable to gain/lose a page? - go back to the beginning, begin fine tuning each page/spread --- are there any paragraphs which don't look nice? (setting too tight/loose, rivers, stacks, &c., adjust as needed), do the bottom lines line up? adjust paragraph specs/image size to make them line up (keeping in mind if one wants to gain/lose a page) --- do this for each page/spread - check the last page --- repeat any of the above adjustments as necessary --- sometimes, while one might want to gain a page, a tighter setting losing a page looks sufficiently better that it's worth un-doing all the tweaking an re-setting thus

coldtea 3y ago

The problem I see is not rigor, it's more that there's no realistic chance we'll ever see that next system available in our lifetimes...