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Well, LaTeX3 was sort of what you describe, but has been dropped: https://www.latex-project.org/latex3/ https://www.latex-project.org/latex3/ If nothing else,

Well, LaTeX3 was sort of what you describe, but has been dropped: https://www.latex-project.org/latex3/ https://www.latex-project.org/latex3/ If nothing else, the support for Unicode via UTF-8 has been a big win, and the new programming model and Lua allow some pretty cool stuff, if I do say so myself --- I'm still impressed by Alan Xiang's solution here: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/722886/how-to-write-out-multiple-text-files-from-multiple-instances-of-latex-environmen https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/722886/how-to-write-... I agree that the preamble stuff is kind of a trainwreck --- I've always held that someone needs to put together a templated version where quite a large number of options are available, but commented out, so that one could work up a version of a document by just uncommenting the appropriate lines --- it really feels like something which LyX should have done. The problem of course is the old greybeards are accustomed to tomes such as: https://ctan.math.washington.edu/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/memoir/memman.pdf https://ctan.math.washington.edu/tex-archive/macros/latex/co...

volemo 6mo ago
> Alan Xiang's solution here Pure witchcraft!
gucci-on-fleek 6mo ago
> Well, LaTeX3 was sort of what you describe, but has been dropped It depends on your perspective, since you could similarly argue that it's already here [0] [1]. > I've always held that someone needs to put together a templated version where quite a large number of options are available, but commented out, so that one could work up a version of a document by just uncommenting the appropriate lines You can Google "LaTeX templates" and get tons of results; the problem is that most LaTeX templates are terrible, probably because making one that is general-purpose, robust, and gives high-quality output is really hard. But theses are probably one the most common reasons for people to use LaTeX, and there are already hundreds of options available on CTAN [2]. [0]: https://www.texdev.net/2024/11/11/the-mythical-latex3 https://www.texdev.net/2024/11/11/the-mythical-latex3 [1]: https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb44-1/tb136mitt-history.pdf#page=5 https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb44-1/tb136mitt-history.pdf#page=5 [2]: https://www.ctan.org/topic/dissertation https://www.ctan.org/topic/dissertation
- WillAdams 6mo ago
  Yeah, but imagine memman.pdf as a Literate .tex source program which had two possible outputs: - memman.pdf - memtemplate.tex where to get the latter one would just iterate through all the possibilities and choose options until one arrived at the end and a template matching the selections which were made was generated. Maybe a project for the next time I re-read that...

volemo 6mo ago

> Alan Xiang's solution here Pure witchcraft!

gucci-on-fleek 6mo ago

> Well, LaTeX3 was sort of what you describe, but has been dropped It depends on your perspective, since you could similarly argue that it's already here [0] [1]. > I've always held that someone needs to put together a templated version where quite a large number of options are available, but commented out, so that one could work up a version of a document by just uncommenting the appropriate lines You can Google "LaTeX templates" and get tons of results; the problem is that most LaTeX templates are terrible, probably because making one that is general-purpose, robust, and gives high-quality output is really hard. But theses are probably one the most common reasons for people to use LaTeX, and there are already hundreds of options available on CTAN [2]. [0]: https://www.texdev.net/2024/11/11/the-mythical-latex3 https://www.texdev.net/2024/11/11/the-mythical-latex3 [1]: https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb44-1/tb136mitt-history.pdf#page=5 https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb44-1/tb136mitt-history.pdf#page=5 [2]: https://www.ctan.org/topic/dissertation https://www.ctan.org/topic/dissertation

WillAdams 6mo ago
Yeah, but imagine memman.pdf as a Literate .tex source program which had two possible outputs: - memman.pdf - memtemplate.tex where to get the latter one would just iterate through all the possibilities and choose options until one arrived at the end and a template matching the selections which were made was generated. Maybe a project for the next time I re-read that...