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> TeX the ungodly complex language A friend, although he is a good mathematician, kept criticizing TeX, so I explained one view of it: TeX was not intended to
by graycat 2y ago
> TeX the ungodly complex language
A friend, although he is a good mathematician, kept criticizing TeX, so I explained one view of it: TeX was not intended to be some new big steps forward in interactive user interface, to replace Microsoft's Word, HTML or Mathematica, or for making images or movies. Instead, TeX was, first, for something he knew well -- the journal of the AMS (American Mathematical Society). For doing the word processing for the AMS, TeX was a nice step forward from what went before.
TeX seems fine to me, just the way it is. Started with Knuth's book and also got his file of TeX source his book. The book is easier to read, but with my favorite text editor KEDIT sometimes the file is easier to search.
Also with the TeX software have the Windows program to display the formatted output on a screen and the program to write the output to a PDF file. Both work fine.
It appears that Knuth made commendable efforts to get any bugs out of TeX.
Wrote some macros for TeX: The main collection has, just checked, 86 macros. Also have macros for some special purposes, e.g., foils, inserting images, verbatim, business cards, etc.
Use TeX for business letters; used TeX for the last paper I published: The paper had a lot of tricky math notation, and TeX handled that well. The journal seemed quite pleased to get the TeX input with my macros; then they were able to format the paper right away.
When rusty with TeX, my old papers, letters, etc. and macro collections get me productive again quickly.
Since I like TeX so much and since the philosophy of LaTeX seems different, never used LaTeX.
Knuth's book shows that it's possible to write long documents with TeX.
- WillAdams 2y agoMore importantly, TeX resulted in the concept of "Literate Programming" as exemplified by the books: _TeX: The Program_ and _METAFONT: The Program_ I've found that LP allows me to be successful working on projects which are more complex and of greater length than other tools allow me to --- worst case is I find myself reading through a nicely typeset hyperlinked PDF until I understand the code I need to modify and am then able to control/command click to go right to it in the editor. I've been trying to put together a list of Literate Programs published as books: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355-william-adams?ref=nav_mybooks&shelf=literateprograms https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355-william-adams...
- graycat 2y agoKnuth's "Literate Programming"???? NO WAY!!! Not a chance!! I won't mention that one!!!! It appears that all the overt, happy, productive literate programming people get banished to, to where, to, maybe, Antarctica, under one of the ice sheets, naw, the back side of the Moon!!! E.g., for a sample of just 1, the little piece of code I'm working on now, just had my favorite text editor KEDIT count, has (hush, secret) 387 lines of comments in a file of 840 lines. And one of my worst transgressions of solid, world-wide norms, I have no undefined technical terms or acronyms. And for this code, I have an external document on the architecture -- for that transgression, could be sent to Pluto???
- WillAdams 2y agoI wish that I was a better programmer, so could be a better advocate for this programming style. I wish that there were more standard tools for it --- it kills me that I couldn't find a nice .layout for doing Literate Programming in LyX w/ arbitrary programming languages. I'm just glad that my using this system lets me overcome hurdles/complexity beyond levels which previously posed insurmountable stumbling blocks --- at a previous job there was a typesetting back-end for phone book ads which I had written in LaTeX using a documented TeX file (.dtx) --- once a year or so they would sell a license to a new customer and I would have to update it to their needs, and every quarter or so there would be a bug report... being able to read through the code would quickly get me in a place where I could fix things and then move on to the next task. Current effort is at: https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview At some point in time I need to look into if using Lua would allow some niceties such as per-file line # tracking...
- metaed 2y agoThe answer to "where" is <news:comp.programming.literate> and <https://www.reddit.com/r/LitProg/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LitProg/>.