
What is LaTeX and Why You Should Care - s-phi-nl
http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/latex.html
======
uggedal
I procrastinated quite a bit when writing my master thesis by trying to make
it as beautiful as possible. Take a look to see what's possible with LaTeX:
[http://www.duo.uio.no/sok/work.html?WORKID=81971&lang=en](http://www.duo.uio.no/sok/work.html?WORKID=81971&lang=en).
The source is available here: <http://bitbucket.org/uggedal/thesis>

~~~
tincholio
Very nice layout. Not very "academic looking", but really nice to look at :)

~~~
amih
Did you print this in color? Did you actually have graphics and screen shots
in the paper? Academy changed (improved?) since I last read academic papers.

~~~
uggedal
Yes and yes.

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sophacles
How appropriate, I just finished a paper today and submitted it for review.
LaTeX is awesome and sucky at the same time. On the awesome side, you have
structure separate from formatting. This comes with lots of benefits as
mentioned in the article. It also allows you to use the concept of imports (or
includes if you will), so you can have _a well factored paper_. It also allows
you to do sane things like footnote, cite and reference diagrams and sources
without a need for explicit number tracking -- just give everything a unique
identifier that works for you. Finally if you do well enough with your
structuring you can output not just different file formats like pdf or ps or
whatnot, you can also output completely different styles. It is pretty simple
to wrap your core with the trappings of IEEE style for one version and a book-
like style for another.

On the sucky side, the toolchain is notoriously difficult and cryptic. For
some reason you have to make multiple passes of various tools by hand (or with
a makefile -- i reccommend <http://code.google.com/p/latex-makefile/> it just
works). The syntax can be a bit inconsistent. The worst is the errors tho,
sometimes it is impossible to figure out why all your figures are showing up
at the end of the document instead of in-place, or why all your references are
failing to point at anything.

Overall tho, it is a fantastic system :)

~~~
drunkpotato
I've started using org-mode to write my papers, then convert to LaTeX. Not
perfect, but I find it's more natural to write in org-mode and helps me focus
on the content instead of drifting off onto the internet to research macros.
(Now I can drift off to read HN instead, a vast improvement in non-
productivity.)

I've started thinking of TeX as the assembly language of document formatting,
LaTeX as C, and org-mode as... pick your favorite higher-level language here,
I'll go with Python.

Not a perfect metaphor, but in terms of paper productivity it feels that way.

~~~
surki

      > Not perfect, but I find it's more natural to write in org-mode 
    

Do you have any specifics on the problems you faced? I produced my master
thesis entirely using orgmode without any problem. (defined custom latex
class, with different kind of ToC etc, not that difficult)

~~~
drunkpotato
I suppose it depends on what you mean by "problems". I don't think org-mode is
coming up short in some fashion.

Org-mode is great for structural editing and tables, and simplifies some
aspects of LaTeX (images, for sure). I still find myself "dropping down" into
LaTeX. I don't think it's an inherent weakness in org-mode, it's just that now
I keep track of org-mode and LaTeX commands.

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jessriedel
It always blows my mind that someone (a philanthropist or the government)
hasn't just thrown down a few million bucks to make a truly user friendly
version of LaTeX. The amount of grad student and professor time wasted dealing
with the flaws in LaTeX is _mind-boggling_.

Or am I naive in this cost estimate? Does anyone know roughly how much money
and developer time went into the currently best editors, like TeXShop and
TeXnicCenter?

~~~
indigoviolet
LyX. <http://www.lyx.org/>

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jff
Speaking as a grad student who has been reading a lot of papers/theses lately,
we can tell if you used LaTeX or Word, and if you used Word we mock you for
your ugly fonts and amateurish layout.

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dpritchett
I only wrote one thesis and I did it in Word. Most of my publishing since then
has been in WordPress.

Is learning LaTeX anywhere near as useful to a professional developer as say
learning vim or emacs?

~~~
kanak
> Is learning LaTeX anywhere near as useful to a professional developer as say
> learning vim or emacs?

I would say no (even though I use latex nearly every single day).

On the other hand, it is indispensable if you're doing maths or anything that
involves lots of formulas, citations, footnotes and what not, because it
decouples the structure of the document from the formatting.

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spicyj
Related: The (La)TeX Stack Exchange site just opened up to public beta:

<http://tex.stackexchange.com/>

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serichsen
Sadly, some publishers actually expect Word documents. The same publishers
then have all kinds of problems where they need considerable help from the
authors to get the layout right.

~~~
blahedo
Including, embarassingly, the magazine of SIGCSE (the ACM SIG for CS
education). I was going to submit something a year or two ago, couldn't find
the LaTeX stylesheet, and sent an email to the editor---who breezily responded
that Word was required, and that their authors didn't really complain about
this. Self-fulfilling: I decided it was more trouble than it was worth and
published it elsewhere, so although I have complained, I'm not one of their
authors!

It does explain why the typesetting is _so bad_ , though. Figures are
especially atrocious, and there are pixellation issues and routine font
problems throughout.

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scott_s
I was shocked when IEEE Computer wanted a Word document. In their defense, I
don't think they actually lay everything out in Word. I think they just
decided that's the easiest way for their layout people to get text and figures
for an article.

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cstross
For a gentle start, it's worth looking at LyX -- <http://www.lyx.org/> \-- a
structured document processor that generates LaTeX output. Available for
*IX/Mac/Windows, with more features than you can shake a stick at -- and it's
open source, so you can try it for free.

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scott_s
This is a good place to put the best explanation I've yet found for how
Latex's figure placement algorithm works:
<http://people.cs.uu.nl/piet/floats/node1.html>

~~~
Splines
FWIW, Word's text layout engine is as sophisticated as LaTeX. IMO, there's
just a large layer of other "stuff" that ends up on top of it that usually
results in your typical looking Word document.

It's better in Word 2007/2010, but still doesn't seem to be all the way there.

~~~
mturmon
The claim that the Word layout engine is as good as TeX's is not correct.

Even for math-free text, TeX does a better job of hyphenating and line-
breaking. The TeX algorithm specifically tries have low variability in line-
to-line fill density. Word does not care, which can result in a loose line
between two tight lines, causing horizontal stripes in a block of text.

For much more, including ligatures, kerning, and transparency, see:

<http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex>

My point above is his point #7.

~~~
flowereater
Ligatures, kerning, hyphenation, etc. can be enabled in Word:
<http://jeffhuang.com/better_word_papers.html>

It's just not on by default which is a shame.

~~~
icarus_drowning
Has anyone done a comparison on how well the kerning/hyphenation/etc. compare
to TeX's? As I understand it, even some commercial packages that are designed
for this sort of thing still fail to match TeX's. I could be wrong there,
however.

~~~
Splines
Also, the component that powers Word's text layout also does it for
IE7/IE8/IE9, WPF and Silverlight (and maybe more, I don't know).

I've heard that Word doesn't play as well with the text layout component as
the component authors would prefer. It's possible that this will improve in
the future.

As for TeX vs Word, that's a great question. I know that the authors of Word's
text layout engine are familiar with Knuth's dead-tree works on typography,
but beyond that, I don't know.

~~~
flowereater
It would be great if someone out there did a blind test of Word vs LaTeX
layout. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult -- just get a few
pages of text from Gutenberg and render it in both Word and LaTeX.

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nuclear_eclipse
> _Once I create a LaTeX document I can easily convert it to any format I am
> interested in, including XHTML and Microsoft Word Document._

Am I the only one who finds it impossible to convert a LaTeX document into a
Word document without it looking like total crap? What am I missing? I build
my resume with LaTeX, and have tried multiple times to get a proper Word
document for all those idiots that don't like PDFs, and every time it looks
like such crap that I break down and send them a plain text version instead...

~~~
skymt
Depending on your definition of "total crap", you might find LaTeX2rtf gives
you acceptable output with minimal manual tweaking. It works for me, though
I'm far from a type snob.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Maybe it's just my specific case, or that my layout is too complicated, but
when I try using that, I get errors on the command line, and the output RTF is
"total crap" by just about anybody's standards. It has excessive vertical
whitespace, including bullets that aren't even on the same line as the text,
doesn't have any correct fonts, and doesn't get horizontal spacing right
either...

    
    
        jreese@mach ~/.../resume » latex2rtf -o JohnReese.rtf JohnReese.tex
        JohnReese.tex:4   Package/option 'oneside' unknown.
        JohnReese.tex:89  Unknown command '\fontfamily'
        JohnReese.tex:90  Unknown command '\selectfont'
        ...
    

Source: <http://files.leetcode.net/resume/JohnReese.tex>

PDF: <http://files.leetcode.net/resume/JohnReese.pdf>

RTF: <http://files.leetcode.net/resume/JohnReese.rtf>

If you can tell me how to fix that (I know squat about LaTeX and it's
associated toolchain), I'll buy you a beer/coffee/cupcake.

------
elasticdog
On a Mac, the MacTex suite simplifies things pretty well [1]. I typically
write my documents in Vim, and then render them to PDFs with TeXShop. It
installs all of the standard TeXLive stuff, so if command-line LaTeX is where
you're comfortable, that works too.

[1] <http://www.tug.org/mactex/2009/>

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helmut_hed
Technology changes all the time but there are a few arguments that never seem
to die... WYSIWIG vs. doc prep languages like TeX (or Scribe, remember that?)
was a hot topic even back in the 80's, with similar arguments being made.
Everything old is new again.

It's amazing to see people getting enthused (again!) about LaTeX.

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gaius
LaTex for Literate programming: <http://yav.purely-
functional.net/haskell_latex.html>

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rhettinger
This article had remarkably little content or analysis. Essentially the only
point made was that LaTeX markup can separate content from presentation.

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obsaysditto
If you use vim then look at the vim-latex suite <http://vim-
latex.sourceforge.net/>

~~~
graywh
Or don't. It's buggy, overly complicated, and barely maintained.

~~~
nat
Agreed. I was really surprised with how odd vim-latex felt. In my experience,
most of these language-specific vim plugins stay pretty light, enhancing
built-in vim behavior to perform in the expected way given a particular
language's peculiarities. Instead, it tries to build up this complex system of
macros and shortcuts that added a really thick layer on top of actually
writing LaTeX (a process that I actually quite enjoy). Maybe it's another one
of those things that I have to see in use to appreciate, and I'm sure there's
some really useful stuff in there, but it just didn't seem worth it.

~~~
inferno0069
Once upon a time I used some vim plugin--and that one sounds familiar--to
allow me to compile from within vim and then jump to that paragraph in the dvi
viewer. I think I could also click a paragraph in the dvi viewer and jump to
that text in vim.

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eegilbert
Did he just make fun of a PNAS paper?

