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Comment by leephillips | Hacker News Reader

People who use [La]TeX tend to become a bit obsessive over typographic details, as well. What do you think of that program? (Very interesting comment, by the way.)

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The hardest part about using LaTeX is getting to the realisation that to replicate InDesign, you might need OpenType support that might not ship by default, as well as needing to run it more than once. Once you have /latexmk.pl [1] and XeTeX [2], you can then achieve amazing results [3] with the right modules and some creativity. It's just not quite as fluid to use as InDesign for graphically-minded people.

1: https://ctan.org/tex-archive/support/latexmk

2: http://nitens.org/taraborelli/TeXOpenType

3: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/showcase-of-bea...

Or you can use make, or a bash script. OpenType support has been standard for years; the preferred engine is LuaLaTeX: https://lwn.net/Articles/731581/

FWIW, as a relatively novice LaTex (in combination with the Beamer program, largely for technical presentations) user, I can imagine why such people nit-pick over typography. The Computer Modern and its derivative Latin Modern fonts are beautiful---not to mention their inimitable flexibility.

I'll blame two of my colleagues for indirectly 'inspiring' me to spend more time than justified, tinkering with LaTex and TikZ (it lets you produce "vector graphics from a geometric/algebraic description"). I'm not happy with the amount of time I spend with LaTex+TikZ, but I find the results to be satisfying and very convincing. Have to diligently chip away at it to get more productive with them.

Something about LaTeX just doesn't click for me, and you'll never in regular use have any need for pure TeX. Luckily, there's ConTeXt which (unsearchable name and comparatively small support base aside) is a very enjoyable flavour and allows for some beautiful typesetting. Maybe not worth it to switch if you're already used to LaTeX, but if you've never used any of the family, I highly recommend giving one or the other a try.

If by "pure TeX" you mean Plain TeX, I use it, as well as LaTeX (I know I'm far from alone here). i agree that ConTeXt is a great project, with many advantages over LaTeX.

Ah, didn't know it was still viable. Thanks!

This comment made me smile, because it's so true :)

After my college days using LaTeX, support for ligatures arrived in browsers and I would spot those (fi, ff, ij, ft, and perhaps others) and post them on Facebook.

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