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"We think LaTeX is still the best programming language to tell a computer how to place text on a page." No. The output might be beautiful, but the language is

"We think LaTeX is still the best programming language to tell a computer how to place text on a page." No. The output might be beautiful, but the language is most certainly not. Awful to debug. I consider a more modern language that compiles to LaTeX and leverage its rendering engine for paper docs (while giving you sufficient control over the output) and also gives you a nice web output more pragmatic and a nicer way to approach the problem.

hyperbovine 13y ago
Strongly agree. It's taboo to criticize TeX because of who wrote it, but let's be honest: from a usability perspective it's atrocious. Cryptic error messages, code that rivals assembler for readability ... hell even the directory layout makes no sense to me, and I've been using TeX daily for over ten years. I hold Knuth in high regard as a scientist, and there's no arguing that TeX is a technical masterpiece which revolutionized the field of mathematics--but this is not the typesetting language that's going to carry us through to the next century (I hope).
- chimeracoder 13y ago
  > Strongly agree. It's taboo to criticize TeX because of who wrote it, I assume you're referring to Knuth, but it's important to distinguish between TeX and LaTeX (the latter was written by Leslie Lamport). The distinction between TeX and LaTeX is actually relevant here.
  - tieTYT 13y ago
    > The distinction between TeX and LaTeX is actually relevant here. I know very little about both. Could you elaborate on the relevance?
    - ygra 13y ago
      TeX is the low-level typesetting system and programming language. LaTeX is a set of macros on top of that that try to support a more semantic approach to document layout. If you see long command names that more or less spell out what they do, it's usually LaTeX. If you see short, cryptic abbreviated commands it's usually TeX.
      - AnimalMuppet 13y ago
        And if you use either TeX or LaTeX instead of Lyx, you're a masochist.
m_mueller 13y ago
> I consider a more modern language that compiles to LaTeX and leverage its rendering engine for paper docs (while giving you sufficient control over the output) and also gives you a nice web output more pragmatic and a nicer way to approach the problem. I'm currently looking for exactly such a solution. Have you found any? Sidenote: Ideal would be a language that comes with either Word or E-Pub conversion tools (in order to migrate existing word documents over). I say E-Pub because there is a relatively nice migration path from Word to there: Get on a Mac, open the Word in Pages, export to E-Pub. Can also be used to get a sane xhtml output, since it's just a zipped folder with xhtml and some images.
- taeric 13y ago
  Emacs with org-mode works very well this way.
- theophrastus 13y ago
  yep... we're all ears to alternatives. i often have to publish technical works academically and i really think the current crop of non-LaTeX solutions produce painful results. but i'm up against "we all use MSWord™ because we all use MSWord™" and there will be no getting overworked academics to invest the energy in anything that doesn't look like the tools with which they are already familiar. so... for gawdsake, find me something which isn't LaTeX which produces good equations and good page positioning without crashing and -looks- like MSWord to the non-technical computer user. i've had no luck. (and my cobbled together web nightmare rtf2text, git merge, meta LaTeX rube-goldberg device is leaking oil rapidly) oh, and it has to play well with EndNote™ too. -sigh-
  - disgruntledphd2 13y ago
    This post, right here, is one reason I'm glad I'm not in academia any more. I added Sweave to my rube-goldberg device though, and it leaked much, much more.
  - estebank 13y ago
    Have you tried Lyx[1]? It might not be as straightforward as MS Word, but if you care about the way the page looks, aren't afraid of using writing a little bit of LaTeX by hand, it works great. [1]: http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/
dyoo1979 13y ago
A system that takes ideas from http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/ http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/ would be most welcome.
ghswa 13y ago
"No. The output might be beautiful, but the language is most certainly not. Awful to debug." Absolutely agree but, as far as I'm aware, this "more modern alternative" does not exist.
- nas 13y ago
  Lout is quite a bit saner but doesn't have much traction. It seems to be in "deep maintenance" mode now.
- vmarsy 13y ago
  What about this ? http://dlmf.nist.gov/LaTeXML/ http://dlmf.nist.gov/LaTeXML/ Having some XML output seems to make it easier to add CSS rules ?
  - SeanLuke 13y ago
    Combines the complexity of LaTeX with the hideousness of XML. Great.
- andolanra 13y ago
  There's Patoline[^1], which is still in a somewhat early state, and its language is quite LaTeX-ish. [^1]: http://patoline.com/index.html http://patoline.com/index.html

hyperbovine 13y ago

Strongly agree. It's taboo to criticize TeX because of who wrote it, but let's be honest: from a usability perspective it's atrocious. Cryptic error messages, code that rivals assembler for readability ... hell even the directory layout makes no sense to me, and I've been using TeX daily for over ten years. I hold Knuth in high regard as a scientist, and there's no arguing that TeX is a technical masterpiece which revolutionized the field of mathematics--but this is not the typesetting language that's going to carry us through to the next century (I hope).

chimeracoder 13y ago
> Strongly agree. It's taboo to criticize TeX because of who wrote it, I assume you're referring to Knuth, but it's important to distinguish between TeX and LaTeX (the latter was written by Leslie Lamport). The distinction between TeX and LaTeX is actually relevant here.
- tieTYT 13y ago
  > The distinction between TeX and LaTeX is actually relevant here. I know very little about both. Could you elaborate on the relevance?
  - ygra 13y ago
    TeX is the low-level typesetting system and programming language. LaTeX is a set of macros on top of that that try to support a more semantic approach to document layout. If you see long command names that more or less spell out what they do, it's usually LaTeX. If you see short, cryptic abbreviated commands it's usually TeX.
    - AnimalMuppet 13y ago
      And if you use either TeX or LaTeX instead of Lyx, you're a masochist.

m_mueller 13y ago

> I consider a more modern language that compiles to LaTeX and leverage its rendering engine for paper docs (while giving you sufficient control over the output) and also gives you a nice web output more pragmatic and a nicer way to approach the problem. I'm currently looking for exactly such a solution. Have you found any? Sidenote: Ideal would be a language that comes with either Word or E-Pub conversion tools (in order to migrate existing word documents over). I say E-Pub because there is a relatively nice migration path from Word to there: Get on a Mac, open the Word in Pages, export to E-Pub. Can also be used to get a sane xhtml output, since it's just a zipped folder with xhtml and some images.

taeric 13y ago
Emacs with org-mode works very well this way.
theophrastus 13y ago
yep... we're all ears to alternatives. i often have to publish technical works academically and i really think the current crop of non-LaTeX solutions produce painful results. but i'm up against "we all use MSWord™ because we all use MSWord™" and there will be no getting overworked academics to invest the energy in anything that doesn't look like the tools with which they are already familiar. so... for gawdsake, find me something which isn't LaTeX which produces good equations and good page positioning without crashing and -looks- like MSWord to the non-technical computer user. i've had no luck. (and my cobbled together web nightmare rtf2text, git merge, meta LaTeX rube-goldberg device is leaking oil rapidly) oh, and it has to play well with EndNote™ too. -sigh-
- disgruntledphd2 13y ago
  This post, right here, is one reason I'm glad I'm not in academia any more. I added Sweave to my rube-goldberg device though, and it leaked much, much more.
- estebank 13y ago
  Have you tried Lyx[1]? It might not be as straightforward as MS Word, but if you care about the way the page looks, aren't afraid of using writing a little bit of LaTeX by hand, it works great. [1]: http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/

dyoo1979 13y ago

A system that takes ideas from http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/ http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/ would be most welcome.

ghswa 13y ago

"No. The output might be beautiful, but the language is most certainly not. Awful to debug." Absolutely agree but, as far as I'm aware, this "more modern alternative" does not exist.

nas 13y ago
Lout is quite a bit saner but doesn't have much traction. It seems to be in "deep maintenance" mode now.
vmarsy 13y ago
What about this ? http://dlmf.nist.gov/LaTeXML/ http://dlmf.nist.gov/LaTeXML/ Having some XML output seems to make it easier to add CSS rules ?
- SeanLuke 13y ago
  Combines the complexity of LaTeX with the hideousness of XML. Great.
andolanra 13y ago
There's Patoline[^1], which is still in a somewhat early state, and its language is quite LaTeX-ish. [^1]: http://patoline.com/index.html http://patoline.com/index.html