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Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

Same, I just did my resume in LaTeX, it's such an obtuse and painful tool, yet nothing even comes close to the control it gives you.

Hey btw, I'm looking for contract work! https://github.com/1player/resume/blob/master/resume.pdf

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I always wonder with comments like this what LaTeX allows that Adobe Indesign is incapable of.

Plaintext source file; hence source control and portability. Also it's free in both senses.

* Free (as in freedom) and open source

* Cross-platform

* Industry standard in the sciences

Surely plain old html does?

For several years (a decade maybe?) I authored my resume in LaTeX. Then a few years ago I wanted to restructure it radically, and make an interactive version that showed off some simple subset of my full-stack skillset (from design to implementation). This goal led me to authoring it in HTML with CSS. I never actually got around to implementing my full vision because I had an unexpected opportunity land in my lap before I'd officially started looking. I had the design and static mockup completed, so I just exported that to PDF and used it. In hindsight, I spent a lot less time getting the look I wanted in HTML than I did in LaTeX.

I still tend to use LaTeX for some long-form documentation, but I'll probably stick to HTML for my resume and I'm finding myself using HTML + Markdown a lot more for other authoring tasks too.

It's not the right tool for the job, in this case perfectly laying out text on a A4 sheet of paper. HTML is made for variable-sized screens, and can be repurposed to be printed, but it's still trying to screw a nail in when all you need is a hammer.

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