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That assumes that the only issue with LaTeX is its syntax. Other issues I can think of are that LaTeX doesn't generate HTML and that LaTeX is completely Unicode
by Timwi 1y ago
That assumes that the only issue with LaTeX is its syntax. Other issues I can think of are that LaTeX doesn't generate HTML and that LaTeX is completely Unicode-disabled.
- genewitch 1y agoHow do the science and math papers use characters that aren't in... ASCII? Maybe I need to look at an ASCII chart. Out of curiosity, isn't UTF implementation much easier now than it has been? I piddle in writing things and I rarely contemplate UTF. Once I tried to reverse engineer an encryption plugin that used Asiatic characters as the ciphertext, and I wanted to use emoji, and that was when I learned I am too dumb to understand utf. But there's libiconv, which I first saw in production (ICQ or aim or Trillian or so) over 22 years ago, personally. So is the latex thing obstinance, technical, or political?
- yannis 1y agoSorry you need to catch up! The latest LaTeX engines (LuaLaTeX) can even do unicode math! But yes the Unicode spec s not something one can understand in a few hours.
- yannis 1y agoYour statement is not correct, LuaLaTeX can output any unicode character you need and also you can use Lua as well for scripting.
- michal_h21 1y agoOther incorrect statement is that LaTeX cannot generate HTML. There is number of projects for LaTeX to HTML conversion (TeX4ht, Lwarp, LaTeXML), also Pandoc can convert subset of LaTeX to HTML.
- yannis 1y agoAbsolutely; One should also keep in mind why do you need the HTML, drop the pdf file on Google drive, and it will serve it fine, no webservers can limit who can see it, no friction for authorizations etc. Granted difficult to view on a mobile, but who can really do serious reading of a paper on mobile?
- Timwi 1y agoOK so either you're confirming that LaTeX is useless for anyone who actually needs to generate HTML and not PDF, or you're implying that nobody ever needs to use HTML and the whole Internet should just be PDFs?
- Timwi 1y agoI'm confused. Your first sentence implies that LaTeX can generate HTML and then you process to list other projects that you need. This whole thread is about an alternative to LaTeX which can actually genuinely just output HTML.
- Timwi 1y agoI admit I was unclear but I wasn't talking about output.