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It's mindblowing that there's no modern LaTeX replacement. I've seen talks about it at https://hackpad.com/New-scientific-markup-language-utAjFcYuvvB https://ha

by s9w 12y ago

It's mindblowing that there's no modern LaTeX replacement. I've seen talks about it at https://hackpad.com/New-scientific-markup-language-utAjFcYuvvB https://hackpad.com/New-scientific-markup-language-utAjFcYuv..., but nothing came out of it. Something with a saner syntax (think markdown), a modern interface for nontrivial tasks (maybe pythonic), better extensibility, cleaner codebase, better error msgs.... There would be millions of users instantly, but it's probably a gigantic task. Someone do it, please

robinhoodexe 12y ago
A dream in the distant future: (La)TeX gets the same treatment as Vim is getting right now with Neovim [1]. A full refractoring to make code from the 80s readable by a larger group, make it faster (some kind of JIT compiler would be nice) and just cleaner in every way. [1] http://neovim.org/ http://neovim.org/
- s9w 12y ago
  It would be fantastic, yes. I guess the difficulty with LaTeX are that typography and pdf/ps output are more difficult than other projects.
- Derbasti 12y ago
  Pdflatex is a rewrite that compiles directly to PDF. Xetex is a rewrite that supports Unicode and TTF/OTF fonts. Luatex is a rewrite that supports Unicode and TTF/OTF fonts and is scriptable in Lua.
  - Derbasti 12y ago
    Oh, I forgot: LuaJitTex is a descendant of LuaTex that uses LuaJit to compile.
jessriedel 12y ago
I have long maintained that the single best use of a million dollars to advance math and science would be to hire a small team of developers to make a LaTeX that doesn't suck. The amount of grad student, postdoc, and professor time wasted on dealing with it is staggering. Can anyone give me an order-of-magnitude estimate for how much it would cost to make an "enterprise-quality" version of LaTeX? Something with the same powers, but say, the ability to use columns without reading web forums, with packages that don't conflict, and with human-readable errors.
bbrks 12y ago
Err, I'm not sure why but I just opened your link at work, and it is a page full of Goatse images... I thought I'd seen the last of that 10 years ago.
- s9w 12y ago
  It was briefly vandalized, but restored now

by s9w 12y ago

robinhoodexe 12y ago

A dream in the distant future: (La)TeX gets the same treatment as Vim is getting right now with Neovim [1]. A full refractoring to make code from the 80s readable by a larger group, make it faster (some kind of JIT compiler would be nice) and just cleaner in every way. [1] http://neovim.org/ http://neovim.org/

s9w 12y ago
It would be fantastic, yes. I guess the difficulty with LaTeX are that typography and pdf/ps output are more difficult than other projects.
Derbasti 12y ago
Pdflatex is a rewrite that compiles directly to PDF. Xetex is a rewrite that supports Unicode and TTF/OTF fonts. Luatex is a rewrite that supports Unicode and TTF/OTF fonts and is scriptable in Lua.
- Derbasti 12y ago
  Oh, I forgot: LuaJitTex is a descendant of LuaTex that uses LuaJit to compile.

jessriedel 12y ago

I have long maintained that the single best use of a million dollars to advance math and science would be to hire a small team of developers to make a LaTeX that doesn't suck. The amount of grad student, postdoc, and professor time wasted on dealing with it is staggering. Can anyone give me an order-of-magnitude estimate for how much it would cost to make an "enterprise-quality" version of LaTeX? Something with the same powers, but say, the ability to use columns without reading web forums, with packages that don't conflict, and with human-readable errors.

bbrks 12y ago

Err, I'm not sure why but I just opened your link at work, and it is a page full of Goatse images... I thought I'd seen the last of that 10 years ago.

s9w 12y ago
It was briefly vandalized, but restored now