The LaTeX Fetish (2016)

I've switched from writing latex to writing pandoc markdown. I then convert it to latex and then to pdf. This gets the same result as latex, but is much easier to type for common stuff like, sections, emphasis and verbatim. It also allows you to type "&" symbols anywhere.

When I require "advanced" stuff like tables and figures you can easily fallback to inline latex commands within you're markdown. It really is a significant improvement over plain latex and I haven't looked back.

I had a few things about TeX versus LaTeX. I think the reality is nobody really tries writing TeX.

But, ultimately my beef is the straw man that markup is bad because it is harder to read. That a graphical editor is superior because it is more readable. Instead, the advantage is that in the one you are only writing text and you are indicating special instructions to the computer. In the other, you only see what the computer is letting you see. Note that in both cases, all of those special instructions are still there. You just can't necessarily see them.

And this might sound like not a big deal. But the first time you find yourself unable to change the bold of one section of text (or centering/whatever), you will really wish you could just drop into a view that showed you why it was doing what it was doing. Which is ultimately just a markup language.

And heaven help you if you decide to upgrade word processor mid paper. Or go back and try to touch up a previous one. Markup wins because it is just plain text. And plain text wins because it is ubiquitous.

So, to demonstrate how bad LaTeX is, he picks the single most markup heavy thing you do (barring tables) and compares it to plain text? Plain text, I'll point out, that doesn't format the same way. In practice, there _are_ a bunch of extra steps to get this working in Word, they're just not easy to express in a text document.

Then he goes on to show the example of trying to find a spelling error. Ignoring that this just demonstrates his editor support isn't as strong as word's. And completely elides the cascading nightmare that is what happens when Word formatting goes wrong.

Someone else has already pointed out how much superior a text based format is if you want to work with multiple people or track the history of a document.

WYSIWYG editing has, to my mind, one advantage only: it's easier to get started. LaTeX has its disadvantages (such as being a macro language) but being a markup language isn't one of them.

One passage made me a bit mad:

"[...], but for now it is enough to observe that people who don’t know how to use a particular tool very well are being told to throw that tool away and learn to use an entirely new one on the grounds that it will enable them to do things that they could have done at least as well with the old one – which is (when you think about it) a little peculiar if the aim is really to help people with their writing, and not (heaven forbid!) simply to evangelise for a community’s preferred way of doing things."

I'm sorry, but this is a bad argument and the worst life advice in the article. It's the same students in school tell all the time, when they question why they should learn math, though they are set to become an artist or editor or anything that seemingly does not involve math. You particularly go to college or university to learn NEW things. Even if they are things you probably won't need in the future and are seemingly obsolete.

While he does have a point that (La)TeX Users fetishize their tool of use, most of his arguments can be used on Word or any WISIWYG tool, too. The example he gives in point 4 is so arbitrarily chosen and his minimal example he thinks is better is just as ambigious and confusing as the LaTeX one. Most comments already mention what the author's real problem: Preference of tool.

One of the best article titles I've ever seen on HN! I actually L'd OL.

I think the author's thesis could be summed up as 'I like WYSIWYG more than markup', which is purely a matter of preference. I also know there are several tools which let you do this (to varying degrees of success) with LaTeX as an output. My own preference is having a complete understanding of why everything is where it is in a layout. In my experience WYSIWYG UX has to compromise on its own flexibility and coherence in order to support intuitive and immediate operations around formatting. I have memories of superstitiously pushing bits of padding around when I had to sue word in high school. Editing complex proofs in a WYSIWYG editor seems like an exercise in frustration.

I agree with the overall sentiment, but I don't think that any WYSIWYG alternative exists yet that:

- Interacts well with version control: it is trivial to maintain a LaTeX document in a git repo, and the diffs are readable (especially with --color-words)

- Makes it possible to programmatically generate formatted text, tables, graphs, possibly from external data sources, either with the internal macro language or through an external scripting language

- Has reasonable separation of content and formatting. For example when submitting the same document to multiple conferences it is almost trivial to adapt the content to the required formats.

If writing mostly prose, these may not matter much, but for technical writing I would rather not do without them.

The author doesn't like writing using markup languages. Some of the rest of us do.

I'm with him to the extent that LaTeX evangelism can be oversold - when I'm talking to curious colleagues I tend to stress the vertical learning curve as much as the quality typesetting and convenient cross-referencing - but I do think most of his argument is simply a matter of personal preference.

For me, the fairly stiff default structure imposed by a LaTeX document class makes my writing easier, quite apart from any advantages at the publishing stage.

I have spent countless hours fiddling with both LaTeX and Word trying to get them to do what I want. The difference between the two is, once I had figured out how to make LaTeX do what I want, the steps were all documented and reproducible. With Word I had no such record of all the menu items, settings, and button clicks that had given me what I wanted.

Does this post contain any other argument than "I think it is too hard"?

Except for handwriting based solutions like the very cool Nebo app, I really don't think there is a better way to enter formulas, and it can be learnt in a matter of hours.

Writing complete documents in LaTeX is perhaps a bit more verbose, but then he can use some of the methods suggested here, like pandoc.

Spellchecking he can have if he wants, and even WYSIWYG.

It's worth noting also that if you're aiming for a career in math or physics, not learning LaTeX isn't really an option.

EDIT: I referred to the Nebo app as 'MathPad', which is an older incarnation of the same idea, Nebo is MUCH better.

I am currently writing my first print book, and honestly feel that LaTeX is the best solution. I want precise control over a 250+ page book. I have never seen a WYSIWYG editor that doesn't make that a royal PITA.

Different gutters on left and right pages, chapters always starting on a right hand page, consistent and great justification, fine control over how chapter headings appear (and quick to update) etc. etc.

On a side note, is anyone aware of a good way to convert LaTeX (or the produced pdf) into an ePub?

Deep down in section 7 is the author's own TLDR:

I think you’ll probably agree that the LaTeX version looks better than the word processor export version. Whether it looks sufficiently better to justify the additional effort is a judgement call that you’ll have to make for yourself.

LaTeX is indeed a typesetting tool, in the sense that the user writes content, LaTeX transforms it into typeset content. I'm not sure why the author goes through the same usual criticisms of LaTeX: 1) it's not for everyone; 2) it's good only for researchers; 3) it has a steep learning curve; etc. These have been known and discussed about for years.

The coder analogy (i.e. the type/compile loop) is close to my heart: I use Emacs both for coding+debugging and for writing content with LaTeX. A strong linking point between the two is TikZ-PGF. I'll consider alternatives to LaTeX when somebody comes up with something as powerful as TikZ-PGF.

The author misses one very important feature of LaTeX that is the reason why I keep a lot of my notes in it. LaTeX exposes two mechanisms for easily making replacements all across a document. One is with macros, which you can change the definition of when necessary. The other is the simple search-and-replace, which is very powerful since you can involve macro and formatting syntax in it. Traditional word-processing and note-taking software like Word and OneNote simply don't expose such powerful functionality for making edits across the entire document.

I'm one of those guys. I used to write my university philosophy papers in LaTeX (which I learned from physics+maths classes), and dealing with citations was definitely a lot easier. A more understated advantage of using markup was that I was trivially able to nondestructively comment out sections or leave comments on important points or paragraphs in a paper, not unlike what one would do in code. Once I got used to that I couldn't go back to WYSIWYG. Now, if I don't have time to deal with LaTeX, I'll just use Markdown or whatever format that isn't proprietary.

I have only three gripes about LaTex and friends.

First, LaTeX was intended for physical publication, so there's no native notion of text reflow or "responsiveness". Worse, everyone distributes their documents as PDFs, which are a PITA to read on a smaller device or ereader. At best, an author could utilize something like pandoc to distribute an HTML version, but alas, publishers never give a damn.

Second, I have been spoiled into expecting that I can modify the way a document looks to my liking, not yours. I can't invert the colors at night. I can't change the font size, line height, or margins--and my God do people use some huge margins with LaTeX.

Then comes the math syntax... Yes it's very powerful, but its a noisy mess to read and write. I really wish we had a simpler syntax akin to ASCIIMath[0].

LaTeX: (\left(\frac{1}{2}\right))

ASCIIMath: (1/2)

[0]: http://asciimath.org/

I'm surprised the author does not mention another reason that've heard in favour of using Latex: scale and predictability.

A LaTeX Document will always behave the same whatever its size and content. Whereas word processors may unexpectedly change formatting without anyone noticing, for example in the case where you share a file with someone and this person update the text and sends it back. The text written might not belong to the same formatting family as the rest of the text but shares the same appearance and this change will go unnoticed until the original owner changes the appearance of the formatting family.

Not to mention versionning. Having your thesis in Latex in a git repo will consistently work. Whereas you will struggle sharing a single .docx file across multiple system or even different word versions. And you lose any possibility to roll back, inspect the history or show diffs.

I feel offended by the omission of my personal favorite, reStructuredText (reST). It's a very robust and readable markup language, and can easily generate documents in HTML, Linux man, latex, pdf, odt and more.

If readability of LaTeX bothers you so much, use reST. Best of both worlds, really. I only roll up my sleeves with LaTeX when I need precise control over appearance, like writing a CV or a board game manual.

I write LaTeX mostly because it works and looks nice, everywhere. Reading the document is easy, because it renders every time I save, which is very frequently. I also use it because it let's me do sweet stuff when I want to, but I fully appreciate that that's just overhead for most people.

I mean look at the title on the screenshot rendered by Writer! It's horrific! I've found things improve when you move to a 15" 4k screen, but on my 1080p desktop monitors at work Writer is barely readable. You seem to be in luck you're using a Mac, since it's even worse on Linux in my experience.

> I know where it is because I put it there, but looking for it is hurting my eyes.

Perchance the fault is with your text editor. It hurts my eyes, too, but the problem disappears when I use my local editor.

I just switch my consulting company to have all our documents (Statement of Work, proposals, NDA, MSA, etc) in LaTeX.

It has worked amazing well. For a few reasons:

1. We easily can typeset all our documents the same and if we do something like change the letterhead we can easily update them all.

2. Auto-generating documents (forms letters) is a snap.

3. Everything is source controlled.

3a. If a client needs customizations we can give them their own branch and easily diff the branch with master. Very useful for documents that have legal side effects.

I disagree with the premise.

A few years ago, my brothers were simultaneously writng their Masters theses (in civil engineering, where LaTeX is not exactly common).

One of them decided to plunge into LaTeX. It took him a week or so to get productive, but once everything was set up, it "just worked" and he could focus on his thesis.

The other one decided to stick to the conventional choice, Microsoft Word. He started writing immediately because Word is what he's familiar with, but when the deadline neared, he descended into near-madness as he fought Word's hobby of breaking the entire layout whenever a new character is inserted.

In the end, you're always going to have to invest some amount of time for the typesetting of a thesis or paper. But LaTeX has the advantage of letting you plan when to pay that cost. (Up to a certain point, of course. The final layout is "final" for a reason.)

So use LyX. It's a LaTeX word processor. I've used it for years to avoid having to directly write LaTeX.

I just write in emacs org mode and call latex (or any other language) when needed. Then I often export to latex+pdf for that nice latex look.

I've spent a lot of time in both Word and LaTeX writing papers and reports in grad school, and nowadays, strictly use LaTeX. I feel like the author missed some crucial elements as to why people use the latter. First, references, cross-references, and citations. These are all shockingly simple in LaTeX. \ref or \cite is all you have to think about to cite papers or reference figures, tables, etc. In Word, I have used Mendeley's citation system, and the built in cross reference system to the same task, but when it comes to the editing process between multiple people and having different files sent around, it invariably breaks, leading to hours of extra work either doing it manually (have fun updating figure numbers if you add another one, or citation superscript), or reinserting all the necessary cross references. With a LaTeX file, this is pretty hard to break.

Secondly, LaTeX handles figures 10000x better than Word, in that you just let it figure out placement inline. Captions are as simple as possible. Meanwhile, have you ever had that Word document with 10 figures in which you move one inline image, and every figure jumps to a different page, leading to spam clicking Ctrl+z? Or how about adding figure captions? Inline you have to use the caption tool, which isn't fantastic and often creates a text box that isn't strictly tied to the figure. The method I found best was just to have another document simply for figures and write the captions in regular text. This both looks bad, and during the editing process, requires you to switch between files to keep track of the figures that are being referenced in the text. Additionally, automatic figure numbering depends on where the figure anchor is, often leading to improper numbering. Again, referencing figures by number in Word is a nightmare that LaTeX handles amazingly.

Third, I agree, setting up LaTeX on a machine isn't fun, and I have always been bad at it. However, I don't do it anymore. ShareLaTeX has solved all of those problems for me. All packages are available, you don't have the funny "compile three times to get reference numbering correct", it's amazing at collaboration with both git-like diffs as well as Word-like track changes/commenting system, and has tons of templates so the pain of setting up your document's preamble is done for you.

One tip I have is if someone you work with doesn't know LaTeX and can't be convinced to learn it, still write in LaTeX, compile to pdf, and use Acrobat to convert to Word. That works surprisingly well. The Lyx version conversion does not work nearly as well. I can't say I've tried pandoc though, I would like to try that next.

I think many academics write in LaTeX because it is easier to switch between document formatting styles. If you submit to multiple journals that all have their own poorly made Word 2007 templates, even the pain of LaTeX is not so bad.

While the difficulty of reading markup vs a compiled document is subjective, there are tools such as texstudio [1] that allow real-time preview of the document synchronized with the code [2].

[1]: http://www.texstudio.org [2]: https://i1.wp.com/gauravtiwari.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/0...

I don't know know if I missed it, it seems like author was really trying to cover all the arguments, but the Tex family languages are for hardcore typesetting automation. Author said all Latex docs have a characteristic look. And most typeset examples that I've seen on the web fit that description. Because for the most part they use the default settings, default libraries, and default fonts, etc. Maybe with some variation.

We can agree that everything that needs to be pinched and squeezed can be pinched and squeezed with Latex. So, creating stylish modern looking tables, full page width graphics overlayed with expensive commercial fonts, custom vector graphics and diagrams, is feasible. You would never even recognize it was done with latex. This makes sense at corporate scale painting reports, white papers, invoices, in company colors, logos, and styles. Churning hundreds of styled docs. That's the use case I see for Latex, but no one goes around showing these off, I assume because making styles like this is a job, and the styles themselves assets.

The 2gig TeXLive installation is quite an elephant. I often wish that I could just pick what I really needed; but that requires me to understand the dependency of those packages and suspect the end solution may point to re-engineer the whole thing. Yesterday I independently had this resolution that I shall experiment using plain TeX + my own meta-layer macros and see how far I could go.

The font installation and selection is something I wish to have a GUI interface as simple as a word drop-down. Maybe I should find/or make such simple tool (ideally it should load the .tex file and provide WYSIWYG interface).

The edit-compile-debug cycle is the simple way of dealing with complexity. The text form (markup or code) decomposes the complexity into abstract parts that we can focus on one part a time and the feedback loop provides a progressive path to perfection. I believe at some point, programming skill should be as common just as literacy today, at which point this edit-compile-debug cycle will be accepted just as we learn to accept a book without pictures.

The author talks about word processors being better because of ease of use, modern features, etc., but you can get these same features if you use software like TexShop or TexStudio or whatever the modern equivalent is. You'll get pleasing spell checking, and you won't have an awful colour scheme like the author uses in emacs.

I agree that at the draft stage it's not desirable to use LaTeX, or when you need to collaborate with non academic users. But Libre Office is really not a serious alternative to LaTeX (please don't ask why). Use markdown in the beginning, and when you have enough materials, you can export to LaTeX and do the final editing.

I disagree that the LaTeX pdf looks better than the LibreOffice pdf, because fully justified text is less legible. If you take your eyes off the text for a moment then it's harder to find your place again. It's all one featureless block with nothing to guide your eyes. The uneven right edge of the LibreOffice version makes it easy to distinguish individual lines. This is especially important if you're skim reading.

But I recognize that some readers prefer the fully justified version. This suggests that the real problem is designing for a fixed page layout. It would be better to publish in something like EPUB, where you can display it however you like. Everybody I know who reads scientific papers reads mostly on screens now, and I think this is common. The printed paper version is more for archival than actual reading, so it doesn't make sense to prioritize paper based typography.

Pretty measured essay. I went through my own LaTex fetish phase. The typesetting can get in the way of the writing. I've found it easier to first write in a text editor and then start typesetting once I'm pretty much sure of the content.

I don't use LaTeX any more.

I used it for my undergrad dissertation. It was great.

I used it for my PhD thesis. It was great.

In between the two, I used it for a research paper. I ended up bringing a couple of extra coauthors onto the paper. They weren't familiar with LaTeX. Guess who ended up doing their editing for them?

I stick to Word these days for anything there's a chance I will have to collaborate on with others. Awkwardness working with people who can't use LaTeX is a risk I'm not going to take. Plus, Word (and associated referencing tools like Zotero) have come on a lot since I first used LaTeX 16 years ago.

Incidentally, I saw yesterday a document - part of a thesis (the printer named and spit these pages afterwards).

300 pages in Word, this was really painful to read. It was pure text, with a few quotes. My first thought was it would have been so much easier in LaTeX - both for the author and the readers.

I wrote my thesis in LaTeX and convinced my wife to write hers in LaTeX as well (~1998). This was not because LaTeX is "better" but the fact that it is plain text, so always useable a way or another, not so with Word

I like writing in a Jupyter notebook. You can use Markdown, write equations with Python and use a module like SymPy to transform to LaTeX, create graphs, etc.

Just a data point: LaTeX is used in math-oriented stackexchanges, like https://scicomp.stackexchange.com Albeit for mathematical notation, not typesetting a complete document.

One might claim it's just catering to the dominant delusional cultist hierarchy... but it sure makes the math a hell of a lot more readable.

It just doesn't seem right to discuss LaTeX alternatives and solutions without mentioning Overleaf, where you can edit and compile from the browser. They also seem to have great collaboration tools, but I haven't used them.

https://www.overleaf.com

It's true, LaTex is for smarter people with better tooling. Sorry you missed the boat on that one. Good luck!

LaTeX is only good for one thing, and one thing only: create same-looking two-column PDFs for research/scholarly publications. And it's barely good at that.

Things may have changed slightly since I last used it (cca 2008), but: combining several languages in one document (Turkish + Russian, anyone?), tables that properly span several pages, inline images, a different layout (that doesn't break languages, or tables, or images, or even works, or doesn't look like shit)? All that is nigh impossible unless you're willing to spend countless hours digging through obscure error messages and arcane setup rules.

I managed to produce this in the end: https://www.scribd.com/doc/31019289/Система-полуавтоматическ...

My verdict: LaTeX? Never again.

Try https://github.com/hplgit/doconce .

This guy gets it. I could not agree more. LaTeX is a cult.

Note: The article is from 2016.

Yeah, try to open those WYSIWYG editor docs, say, 20 years from now, and let us know how well this worked out for you.