
The TeX Pestilence (Why TeX/LaTeX Sucks) - stargrave
http://xahlee.info/cmaci/notation/TeX_pestilence.html
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invaliduser
I can understand why the author is angry at TeX, but I think it's mainly a
misunderstanding. TeX is very low-level, it was designed that way and never
pretended to be anything else. That's why people created macros around it, and
LaTeX is the most successful of them.

I happen to have worked on many document generation systems in my career, I
have written systems targetting odt, docx, postscript, and pdf, either from
scratch (for odt and docx) or xsl/fo (ps), docbook (pdf) or TeX/LaTeX (pdf).

The most satisfying, easy-to-build, but not the easiest-to-understand, the one
that gave the best result in terms of time-to-develop/quality/satisfaction was
TeX/LaTeX. So sure, the math can suck in TeX, maybe, I don't know (didn't feel
that way at uni when I was using it for that), but as a typesettings low-level
language to target, it does a very good job.

Also I fail to see how TeX is an issue, or even how it prevents competition to
happen, when all it takes is writing a better front-end language for it.

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thefz
> TeX is detrimental because it harbors ignorance of the structural content
> embodied in most math notations in most math fields. What TeX does is
> typesetting, as opposed to math expression encoding. In other words, what
> TeX does is pretty-printing.

It's like being angry at HTML because it's not a programming language.

~~~
abhgh
Yeah its a weird article ... the author accuses TeX of being a typesetting
language, which is what TeX advertises itself as anyway.

~~~
smitty1e
Xah Lee has been on of the most outstanding trolls on the internet for
decades.

Look at the panache involved in telling Donald Knuth that his baby is ugly!

In addition to writing highly useful articles on a range of subjects, Xah is a
character that adds great flavor to the internet, and I'm grateful for his
(often wildly obnoxious) rants.

It's good to have someone remind us to review assumptions from time to time.

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choeger
TeX has one, and one only, significant problem. And that is its lack of a
context-free grammar. You cannot parse it without executing it. That means you
have no linting, translation, etc.

Does the author really lament that scientists do not use structured
representations for publication? Did they ever try that in practice?

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pattusk
That's quite a rant, but I fail to see much value in his arguments? TeX was
never meant to parse Math the way Mathematica or other software is?

> Free software acts as a virus. Free systems have the potency to wipe out any
> other protocol or design, including any superior ones (unless they are also
> free). A example is the various Unix systems and protocols has done huge
> irreversible damage to society.

The same unix systems on which the entire internet runs and he probably relies
for his blog post?

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aparashk
"Free software acts as a virus. Free systems have the potency to wipe out any
other protocol or design, including any superior ones (unless they are also
free). A example is the various Unix systems and protocols has done huge
irreversible damage to society.”

Wow that is a novel way to see things. Quite harsh.

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heinrichf
I feel that the author saying LaTeX is bad because it is (in particular) not
based on a GUI/point-and-click system, and preferring Microsoft Equation
Editor/Outline to it, reveals a big misunderstanding.

I also don't see how Mathematica's notation is any better; I view it as way
worse.

~~~
gerikson
> I feel that the author saying LaTeX is bad because it is (in particular) not
> based on a GUI/point-and-click system, and preferring Microsoft Equation
> Editor/Outline to it, reveals a big misunderstanding.

He does not prefer MEE.

Quoting the article:

> TeX, being a pretty-printing system, can be considered in the same class as
> Microsoft Word Equation Editor. The difference lies only in their mode of
> operation. Specifically, TeX is by compile and batch operation like a
> typical computer language, and the Equation Editor is by using a mouse to
> click menus and buttons with graphical user interface. The heart of both as
> far as math notation is concerned, is doodling of a em space or en dash. All
> math notation's semantic structure are lost.

I don’t think asking for a graphical shell for TeX/LaTeX is unreasonable.

However, back when I was winding down my active LaTeX involvement in the late
90s, there were applications that enabled wysiwyg editing of LaTeX.

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spystath
> I don’t think asking for a graphical shell for TeX/LaTeX is unreasonable.

There is one: it's called LyX [0]! You take care of content and LyX will
abstract away most, if not all, TeX stuff. I've used it in the past for quite
extensive documents and it is quite frictionless. It is never going to be a
word processor but I believe LyX strikes the middle ground quite well. This
[1] looks quite "graphic-y" to my eyes

[0] [https://www.lyx.org/](https://www.lyx.org/)

[1]
[https://www.lyx.org/images/about/aqua.png](https://www.lyx.org/images/about/aqua.png)

~~~
gerikson
That was the one! Glad to hear it's still chugging along.

