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Comment by CalChris | Hacker News Reader

With respect to LaTeX, I only started to use it semi-recently in the cloud and I'd recommend it to anyone (but only in the cloud).

I don't want to master an editor anymore. I want to get work done. Pretty much the same with LaTeX. When I want to improve something in a doc, I look it up and do that. When I go back to the doc later, I don't always remember what that magic meant. But that's ok, I'm writing a doc. I'm not trying to master the writing of a doc.

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> With respect to LaTeX, I only started to use it semi-recently in the cloud and I'd recommend it to anyone (but only in the cloud).

$ latexmk -pdf main.tex

How hard is that? The only thing Overleaf adds here is a button and a 10x compilation time overhead.

> I don't always remember what that magic meant.

Overleaf mostly won't help you here, unless I'm mistaken.

I don't mean to be aggressive here, I just don't get the Overleaf hype. What's wrong with good old text editor + version control? I think I'll pass on the slow web app for now. At least they have Git integration so nobody is going to force me to use it.

How do you do package (version) management for LaTeX? There's more than a few documents I've come across that won't build on my system, giving often-indecipherable compilation errors. Overleaf at least ensures everyone involved is using the same environment without needing to ship a Docker container or the like, or try to pin down versions.

I suppose it should be fairly portable, except for missing packages maybe. In my case I have literally every common package installed so that's not an issue. But LaTeX errors are a real pain, I'll admit that.

Nix has a decent solution here, i.e. turn the document into a nix derivation.

  with import <nixpkgs> {};
  
  pkgs.runCommand "cv.pdf" rec {
    src = ./cv.tex;
    bin = with pkgs.texlive; combine {
      inherit scheme-medium collection-latexrecommended collection-fontsextra
              moderncv etoolbox;
    };
    buildInputs = [ bin ];
    allowSubstitutes = false;
  } ''
    ln -s $src cv.tex
    latexmk -pdf cv.tex
    mkdir $out
    mv *pdf $out/
  ''

These days I'd probably use flakes to pin down the latex version.

Lol, that's not the command for making a LaTeX document. The command for making a LaTeX document fills a sheet for all the shit you have to install--half of which isn't correct on whatever documentation you're reading--and THEN you can `latexmk`.

And I do mean you. I gave up after a solid week. I'll just make whatever I want in PowerPoint, save it to a PDF, and be done in 15 minutes.

Yes, I said PowerPoint. Set you're slides to 8.5x11 and it became a typesetting program. I've started getting my coworkers to use it for such and they are absolutely delighted by the bump in design quality they are getting because they aren't fighting Word anymore.

$ sudo apt install texlive latexmk $ latexmk -pdf main.tex

I didn't try it, but it wasn't much harder than that if I recall... If you're on Windows, well, it's your loss :(

Excuse me for being one of the 80% of working Americans

So download whatever latex distro you prefer for windows, open your document, click the button. It will automatically download missing packages in the background. Done.

Highly relevant username.

> Yes, I said PowerPoint. Set you're slides to 8.5x11 and it became a typesetting program.

That won't print sensibly on the paper in your printer, in most of the civilised world.

> I'll just make whatever I want in PowerPoint

If you use PowerPoint, you might try TeXmacs (WYSIWYG, structured and programmable).

> they are absolutely delighted by the bump in design quality

I expect them to be even more delighted :-)

> The only thing Overleaf adds here is a button and a 10x compilation time overhead.

Overleaf removes the need for local install. A full MacTex.pkg install is 4.4GB. I've lived in LaTeX for more than 30 years, and I love the ability to edit docs from any browser.

4GB today is not that much. Current OpenBSD and NetBSD install recommend 2-3GB at minimum for a base OS and 10-16GB for a confortable usage (installing a bunch of pkgs/ports, swap partitions, and so on).

Maybe it's just me, but 4.4 GB does feel like a not insignificant amount of space for something I don't have to install locally. Or for people that use it rarely.

I'm not a huge fan of Overleaf, mind you, but I agree with those that say it does have its uses. The easy collaboration for people that don't like -- or don't get how -- to use git. I wish everyone I collaborate with liked git...

I've used LaTeX for about as long as I've used Emacs, and really, the thought of editing LaTeX from my browser is rather painful. You can still use Overleaf via git, though admittedly the experience isn't as smooth.

Overleaf allows you to work with several authors at the same time on the document. I was skeptical (after all, git allows that too). But after using that feature, well, it is just the killer thing. Now Overleaf doesn't add much on top on my own Latex installation. But the collaborative thing is just spot on (much like Google docs which I have discovered not a long time ago; same analysis : not that good presentation tool, but working together is just incredibly useful).

In my experience, Overleaf is actually awful for collaboration. Maybe my workflow is weird, but I tend to look at the diffs after my colleagues make changes. Also, we mainly use pull requests to add to our papers. This way, everyone can see and comment on changes.

This kind of workflow is not really usable with Overleaf. Overleaf uses Git in the background, but every commit is named "changes on Overleaf" and the individual commits do not really make much sense. In addition, everything is immediately put into the master branch and there's no way to summarize or group changes (like with commits and/or pull requests).

My next problem is, that Overleaf just uses latexmk so if you have some code to generate graphics or tables, you have to compile and add them manually all the time.

my workflow is different : we use voice chat to share and we edit collaboratively. Both these allow to actually work together and, more importantly, think together.

That's very interesting. I honestly didn't think of that, since we often worked asynchronously or at the same machine (which doesn't work at the moment, of course). I can see how Overleaf can be nice for that purpose.

The problem with LaTeX is that it isn't well-designed enough that you can just use it without thinking about the magic.

When stuff is not up to scratch (image is placed incorrectly, spacing in your table is wrong, your diagram has an incorrect alignment, etc), the error messages suck, and you often need to figure out what the magic does to be able to fix the issue.

I don't want to deeply learn an editor myself anymore, too, but that being said I am still extremely glad that the past decades have made me proficient in emacs. The editor is just one of the most important tools for me.

Imagine a carpenter saying, "I don't want to master my tools, I just want to build things."

There’s mastering the use of your tools and there’s tinkering with the windings on the electric motor inside your tools. Emacs offers users both.

How common is it for carpenters to make their own tools? I actually don't know!

Did you write Emacs? Did I write Emacs?

For a lot of custom carpentry, it's pretty common for carpenters to make their own jigs to solve specific problems (e.g., if you need to use your router a bit like a thickness plane to mill down some object by a couple of millimetres along some axis so it fits somewhere, you probably want to build a jig first).

Pretty common, I think. I've made clamps and rove punches for instance, and I've been tempted to make drill bits. (But this is for wooden boatbuilding, which is its own uniquely crotchety corner of carpentry. Not unlike emacs...)

For most woodworkers, I'd say the analogy is closest to making "plugins" for existing tools. They require a little knowledge (which easily obtained on YouTube), and can greatly increase your ability to use the base tool.

One example is a table saw sled, which helps you make clean, repeatable, 90º cuts. It's one of the most useful "plugins" you can have for your table saw, and relatively easy to make. Making the actual table saw, on the other hand, would be expensive and very difficult, and would require knowledge of many fields (metal working, electrical systems, etc.).

It's more like a carpenter saying "I don't want to master my car, I just need to be able to get from place to place". A mathematician isn't payed to typeset papers, they're payed to do mathematics and typesetting in LaTeX is just a means to an end.

I once worked with a pretty amazing older Common Lisp programmer who used some IDE (Xanalys?) He selected forms by dragging with the mouse. Watching that felt uncomfortable, almost like physical pain.

I tried to get him into paredit, but he smiled a little and said his brain isn't so fast that it could keep up with frantic fingers like mine.

Indeed, he worked out things in his head before splashing into the buffers and mostly got things right by doing just a few things, slowly. Of course CL is one of the better languages for that.

I think programmers overestimate the importance of editors or typing. Comfort is more important than speed or efficiency, but of course you feel discomfort if you lose the speed you are accustomed to! If you feel comfortable in whatever editor you use, congrats, your quest is complete.

I can definitely sympathize with this. Typing in things has never been the bottleneck. Rather, deciding what needs to be typed in takes up the majority of the time. It probably helps that neither of my main two languages (Ruby for work/Haskell for fun) is all that verbose.

The thing with LaTeX is that it's a full text-oriented programing language. What is great if you want to extend it, but a problem if you want to use it on any context not supported by the interpreter. So, if you don't want to create a PDF, it just sucks.

Just out of curiosity, which editor do you use? Overleaf?

Yes, Overleaf. I'd always had LaTeX envy but when faced with installation and configuration, I gave up again and again. Overleaf solved all that.

In college we were required to typeset assignments in LaTeX for all the math classes past multivariable calculus. I started out with Overleaf, but switched to local compilation about a year in. It's much nicer to be able to write in my usual text editor and compile documents instantly. On Arch, all I had to do was install texlive-most. It includes every package I have ever needed to use. To compile a document, I just run 'pdflatex *.tex'. Sometimes bibtex too. If you're having trouble with setup and configuration, I recommend texlive.

>installation and configuration

On Linux, literally run the texlive installer script and install an editor like TexStudio if you'd like. That's it.

Use pandoc

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