
Ask HN: Do you write papers directly in LaTeX? - terofle
Hello,<p>what is your workflow for creating scientifical papers?<p>Do you write your research&#x2F;results directly in LaTeX or do you have a different approach,
e.g. creating paper notes before putting it into your word processor etc.<p>Thank you for replies.
======
dijksterhuis
PhD in machine learning & cyber sec here. My workflow:

3 months before...

“huh, I have that coming up, I should probably get something down”

 _writes an abstract on latex then gets distracted by an article on
containers_

2 months before

“I really should start thinking about that...”

 _reads around relevant papers and review results I should have done last
month, makes some paper & electronic notes_

1.5 month before

“I’ll look at it once I’ve got this experiment done”

 _gets distracted by my .bashrc file_

1 month before

“S%%t! S%%t! S%%t!”

 _write 10 pages of _only words_ into a latex document in a git repo_

3 weeks before

 _edit all the words, making sure to use branches / tidy commit names...
render & send to supervisor_

1.5 weeks before

 _tables, references, diagrams... make edits according to supervisor comments_

1 weeks before

 _formatting, final editing, send to supervisor for final review_

Last day

“thank f __king christ”

 _final 5 page version_

...

So... I’m a spree type of person. You may be more methodical.

I’ve found latex & git to be sufficient however.

Your first draft is supposed to be awful. Things should be wrong. Sections
should be a mess. Forget tables and diagrams. References aren’t that important
right now. Getting information down is.

Splurging your knowledge onto paper is the name of the game.

Any word processor application can do that. So latex, word, notepad, whatever.
Just get it down.

After that is editing. This is where version control (git) comes in SUPER
HANDY and I’d recommend avoiding MS Word if at all possible.

It’s easier to look at the changes in documents on GitHub instead of checking
out specific commits, closing word, reopening word, _sigh wrong commit_ ,
repeat.

Latex templates (e.g. ieee articles) also force you to use specific formatting
that’s difficult to change unless you go digging.

Saves you time moving that picture around in word until it’s just right when
you can just align top centre according to the journal’s spec by default.

I also find referencing much easier in latex when combined with bibtex. Word
is horrendous.

So yeah, whatever I can splurge into for step 1, everything else is latex &
git for versioning.

Edit:

Forgot to mention. I have reams of notes I’ve made on papers and photos of
whiteboards I’ve written “explainers” on. My desk is covered in paper in
various different piles.

I usually refer to the actual paper when doing splurge/editing, but if I’ve
forgotten a few things then paper notes/whiteboard photos come in very handy
for re-understanding what the hell im actually talking about.

