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That's funny because the first thing I do when I write a LaTeX document is to make it look less like a (default) LaTeX document.
by kleiba 2y ago
That's funny because the first thing I do when I write a LaTeX document is to make it look less like a (default) LaTeX document.
- MrMcCall 2y agoYeah, especially that font rendering. What has it been? 30 years? 40 years? Yikes!
- deskr 2y agoI love it. It might be "old fashioned" but it's the devil you know and it ain't bad and it's very readable.
- red_trumpet 2y ago> and it's very readable No it's not. Computer Modern is way to thin to be considered readable. This is because it was originally designed with print in mind, which used to have ink bleeding, making thin lines thicker on paper.
- tmoertel 2y agoThe Computer Modern font was designed to incorporate a "blackness" variable that controlled the thickness of its strokes. This provided a way to adjust the design for different printing processes and to accommodate, for example, ink swell or the lack thereof on modern printing devices. Here are some scans by Raph Levien showing the vector design vs. the offset printing in Knuth’s Digital Typography vs. laser printing: https://levien.com/type/cmr/gain.html https://levien.com/type/cmr/gain.html Presumably, the middle version is how Knuth wanted the font to appear on the page. But the bottom version is what we get when we take the digital outlines and render them on a laser printer. Fortunately for us, several people have used the adjustable-blackness feature to make blacker renditions of Computer Modern that are designed to look good when laser printed. MLModern is the one I prefer: > MLModern is a text and math font family with (La)TeX support, based on the design of Donald Knuth’s Computer Modern and the Latin Modern project. It avoids the spindliness of most other Type 1 versions of Computer Modern. For a typeset example of it in use: https://blog.moertel.com/images/public_html/blog/pix-20240601/sampling-with-sql.pdf https://blog.moertel.com/images/public_html/blog/pix-2024060...
- setopt 2y agoMLModern looks much better. I wish they would replace CModern with this as the default font. Does it include ports of the AMS packages with extra symbols?
- Cheezmeister 2y agoIf only there were some way to adjust for that difference when viewed on a different type of medium, such as a high-DPI LED-backlit liquid crystal display. Unfortunately, the web wasn't designed that way, which is why every document that you read on a website instead of on paper is illegible. It's a shame, really. :) /s
- MrMcCall 2y agoI don't doubt it or that it's extremely useful and mostly well-designed. I just wish its font rendering had a bit more meat on its bones. I've never had to use it, so I don't know how it works at all (besides understanding that it's a marked-up file processing pipeline), so I'll ask: is there something deeply problematic with its font rendering tech that it has been like this for soooo long? I mean, I can spot one of its PDFs from a mile away.
- lyu07282 2y agoI don't know much about typesetting, but I always thought it was quite the opposite, Latex is a proper typesetting system for professional physical printing. It's actually almost everything else that looks "wrong" (besides things like InDesign). I think it might also be because many things like browsers or MS Word have to use crude, fast algorithms for typesetting, but Latex uses complicated and slow, but much more accurate algorithms for that. It's like if you compare a printed Word document vs. a printed Latex document it becomes very obvious. Latex looks like a newspaper or magazine, because that's just how printed text is actually supposed to look like.
- MrMcCall 2y agoThanks for that, it makes sense.
- p_l 2y agoThe meat on the bones is the support for ink behaviour when using offset printing, as mentioned by sibling comments. You need different parameters for different display/printing mechanisms
- blackhaz 2y agoI love it too. Very readable, very focused, no distractions. I like it so much more than all those soulless "modern" web 2.0 (or whatever) style clones. This LaTeX look is like a great suit.
- lxgr 2y agoAgreed, but I'd go with a great lab coat :) On the other hand, the reflowing/small screen readability story of LaTeX is a very sad one, and no typesetting will be able to taper over that for me in 2024. Even scientists use smartphones.
- thesuitonym 2y agoOh yes, you have a good point, old is always bad.
- kzz102 2y agoI am wondering how much of the hate of LaTeX document is due to the default font. Computer Modern seems to be disliked by many users of LaTeX as well. I personally am very conflicted, as I have come to identify it as the "vanilla" option so that I have lost any aesthetic sensitivity to it.
- azalemeth 2y agoComputer Modern immediately signals to me "This was written in [Xe|Lua|]LaTeX". That alone has value; at the absolute least it tells me that the person writing it knows enough about computers to drive LaTeX to produce a compiled document. If reviewing e.g. applications from undergraduates for a summer studentship, that signal is a subconscious hint saying 'read this a bit more closely' if nothing else.
- setopt 2y agoWhich is unfortunate, since the students using a different TeX font often know more about TeX.
- jillesvangurp 2y agoDesigners seem to prefer other fonts. That seems to be true whether they work for traditional publishers, advertising agencies, news papers, or indeed web agencies. It just does not seem to be a popular choice outside the narrow niche of people who use latex. Who are of course mostly not designers. And having worked with some great designers in recent years, I tend to follow their lead when it comes to making things look good. But beyond me being conditioned to be bored out of my head reading scientific papers (being an ex-academic who definitely does not miss having to read lots of poorly written papers) written with latex and having that look, I shouldn't have much of an opinion on the matter.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoIDK. I never had any problem reading the default font on screens, which seems to be the problem according to some commenters. It's more that the default style overall feels unappealing and space-wasteful (I get leaving margins for note-taking is a thing, but come on), and yes, also reminiscent of super-boring math stuff. And more than that still. I find myself disliking the style holistically, and can't put my finger on why exactly.