

The Beauty of LaTeX - wwortiz
http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex/

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dmlorenzetti
For some reason, a lot of articles about LaTeX focus, like this one, on
typographic features such as ligatures and line breaking. For me, where TeX
earns its keep is the macro capability. While primitive as a programming
language, the ability to define your own commands is a powerful tool for
enforcing consistency and reducing effort.

Two examples from work. For a proposal, we had to produce two documents, a
short and a long one, with common titles and introductory paragraphs and
cross-references and such. With LaTeX, we actually wrote just one proposal,
with the contents embedded in TeX macros. Changing the macro definitions let
us produce what became two "views" of the same material.

Second, for a paper on sorption modeling, we used macros for all the physical
variables, to make sure all the equations "read" correctly (e.g., writing
"\cSorbBulk" rather than, say, "C_b"). Halfway through the paper, we decided
on a new notation for distinguishing between gas- and sorbed-phase
concentrations. It took maybe five minutes to update the pertinent definitions
and re-set the paper.

~~~
JadeNB
This is an excellent point. For me, the word change on your first line is what
really demonstrates it: many people conflate TeX and LaTeX, because LaTeX _is_
TeX; or, to put it less controversially, LaTeX is written in TeX (rather than
other (wonderful) extensions, like PDFTeX, XeTeX, or LuaTeX, all of which
require source-level changes). LaTeX 3 (<http://www.latex-
project.org/latex3.html>) takes this even further—and all this drives home the
point (which I hope I may safely assert here as fact) that it's often much
better to start with a simple programming language and customise it to your
need, than to have a high-level programming language painstakingly customised
and tuned for an application that turns out to be two millimetres to the left
of the one that you actually want.

~~~
crazydiamond
>it's often much better to start with a simple programming language and
customise it to your need, than to have a high-level programming language
painstakingly customised and tuned for an application that turns out to be two
millimetres to the left of the one that you actually want.

I am interested to know if you had other examples in mind when you said this.
Disclaimer: not trying to start a discussion on languages, or lang war.

~~~
JadeNB
> I am interested to know if you had other examples in mind when you said
> this. Disclaimer: not trying to start a discussion on languages, or lang
> war.

I'm not sure why you'd want to disclaim trying to start a discussion on
languages; it seems like a good thing.

The sentence I wrote was originally intended just to describe TeX, but it
seemed to me in retrospect that it applied almost as well to Lisp. Although
the design philosophies of the two languages are completely different, both
are intended to be the foundations for lots of little languages; Knuth has
said that he was always surprised that people were happy to settle so quickly
on TeX and LaTeX, rather than creating and selecting among many more
specialised dialects. (Of course, a quick glance at CTAN shows that it is
folly to think that everyone who uses TeX or LaTeX does the same thing with
it!)

I posted some more examples of highly customisable little languages at
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1535807>, but I should mention that I
haven't used them.

------
10ren
The danger of LaTeX is you end up in the thrall of its beauty, forgetting your
quest.

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imd
This needs to be updated to compare against Word 2010. It's not there yet (and
will probably always do line-by-line breaking, because who wants their text to
jump around while editing?), but it can also do things that are not easy in
LaTeX (where any custom thing requires somewhat deep knowledge).

~~~
derefr
> and will probably always do line-by-line breaking, because who wants their
> text to jump around while editing?

What about "re-flow whenever you leave everything alone for two seconds"?

~~~
cma
WYSIWYGWYLEAFTS

~~~
loup-vaillant
I can't guess the second part. Could you lay it out for me? Please?

~~~
rlivsey
I think it's "What You See Is What You Get When You Leave Everything Alone For
Two Seconds"

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FalconNL
Alternatively, for those who want good-looking text but prefer the WYSIWIG
approach: just use a half-decent DTP program like InDesign, which will get you
everything mentioned in the article except for the per-character transparency.

~~~
scott_s
Lyx is a Latex editor with WYSIWIG features: <http://www.lyx.org/>

~~~
stan_rogers
To pick a nit, Lyx is WYSIWYM (the M being "mean") -- they point that out a
whole bunch of times in the doco.

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zokier
It annoys me that Latex is compared to Word, when they are bit different
systems. Word is a word processor, and Latex is typesetting system. Much
fairer comparison would be against Quark or InDesign, which are designed for
typesetting.

~~~
spicyj
One problem is that Quark and InDesign are expensive, bloated pieces of
software whereas LaTeX and Word are free and easy to obtain (okay, Word isn't
free, but it's ubiquitous).

~~~
zokier
InDesign is bloated while Word isn't?

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madair
Is this a cargo cult?

Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.

~~~
gorog
Definitely. Those who write for the web don't need TeX. Those who write for
print must not do the job of their editor. Manuscript standards are
technically minimalist. They must look like they were written on a typewriter.
LaTeX is for self-published authors and scientific papers (only because TeX
was the first solution with a decent way to write equations).

~~~
eru
You can also use it for typesetting CVs and whatever people use Microsoft Word
for.

The syntax is a bit antiquated, but its bearable.

I just which web browser would get the typography right one day.

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upinsmoke
Used it to write my thesis. Much better result than Word.

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HilbertSpace
Okay, but my CM fonts in PDF are WAY too light.

Any suggestions of a way to get darker CM fonts in PDF?

~~~
lsb
If you've got a bunch of math, I'd say stick with CM, unless you want to
reconfigure a bunch of stuff. For mostly text, set with sturdy fonts, you can
use the "Serif" and "Sans" in Ubuntu with \usepackage{bera}, which stands for
B[itstream] [V]era, but without the Bitstream(R) Vera(TM) name. Larger
x-height, greater stroke-width, a solid look all around.

~~~
HilbertSpace
I was afraid of that.

My understanding is that the problem with the CM fonts in PDF is actually not
the CM fonts as in Metafont but in the conversion of the CM fonts to what PDF
wants. So, that conversion was essentially by hand by starting with magnified
TeX output and taking 'outlines', in part because what Metafont assumes for
'pens' conflicts with what PS does with 'pens'. So, from the last time I
looked, it seemed that what I needed was just some new conversions of CM to
what PDF wants.

Actually with the TeX distribution I have, there are some nice fonts for just
text, maybe Century Schoolbook, etc. But, again, I never want to give up on
math or the AMS symbols.

Uh, I just use TeX and not LaTeX!

~~~
lsb
For most intents and purposes, I'd recommend using pdfTeX instead of TeX: your
general output format is LCD, not paper, and Metafont renders pixel fonts, not
vector fonts (because TeX's output format after all is paper, not screen).

Also, I found that using the LaTeX macros simplified my life a lot, instead of
trying to reinvent the same formats over and over again. Why do you use just
TeX instead of LaTeX?

