TeX and LaTeX in industry applications | Hacker News Reader

TeX and LaTeX in industry applications

tex.stackexchange.com

67 pointsidle20 comments

My experience tells me that until you are an expert, you have to fight with TeX- sometimes you even have to fight it when you are an expert.

So, much like anything open source vs. Microsoft, you will get excellent results for low effort with the Microsoft tools when doing anything "normal". When doing something really unusual, turn to TeX because it will be easier to wrangle than Word.

For example, I tried really hard to use TeX for my resume. It was a tremendous pain for weeks, and the most popular template hadn't been updated since 1970. I switched to Word and made a better resume in about twenty minutes. On the other hand, when working on a hundred-page collaborative report with a team of eight people working together through a VCS, TeX was a godsend- most notably for \include, inherited layouts, figures, and citations. (Each of which is easy for an individual in Word, but hard to manage with eight people)

you will get excellent results for low effort with the Microsoft tools when doing anything "normal"

If you have basic LaTeX skills, you get excellent results for low effort with LaTeX when doing anything normal.

For example, I tried really hard to use TeX for my resume. It was a tremendous pain for weeks, and the most popular template hadn't been updated since 1970.

As far as my resume is concerned, I can't share your complaint: using an up-to-date template generated by somebody else, it was very easy to adjust it to my needs to get a decent looking resume in no time.

(La)TeX can be quite a hassle for some (mostly complex) issues. But especially for easy tasks, it beats Word and alike easily IMO.

> the most popular template hadn't been updated since 1970

Not sure if you meant TeX as in plain TeX, or TeX as in the system in general. But there are many templates, many of them reasonably contemporary. For example see the ones at http://www.ctan.org/keyword/vita .

I don't see why this post was downvoted. It is subjective, but it has a point - TeX is harder to use than Word or LibreOffice for most people.

My anecdotal evidence - my professors stopped using it after 15 years around the year 2000 if not earlier. Writing a simple document in Bulgarian was an extreme hassle for me. Selecting the correct packages, setting up your environment (weird encoding errors in both Windows and Fedora).

On the one hand, using a modern TeX like ConText can be maddening. On the other hand, there really isn't an open equivalent for dumping out high-resolution arbitrarily complex reports that I'm aware of; all the Jasper reports-inspired reporting systems absolutely suck in terms of printed quality.

Getting HTML to high-quality print status is easier than it used to be, but frankly, it just wasn't designed with printed reports in mind.

The SE comments note that while your colleagues may be impressed with the niceness of your reports, they will be annoyed when they need to edit them: this is my experience as well.

Some people use LaTeX on multi-institution research proposals.

The usual competing tool for this is Word. But coordination of multiple contributions in Word docs can be a hassle, even with the tracking features of Word.

But you can use LaTeX and a good VCS to track and merge changes. Kind of slick. Works best with academic or quasi-academic collaborators, of course.

Most of the automation-type applications mentioned in the thread probably could also use HTML+CSS, which is what I prefer for this stuff now.

I don't know anyone who has used HTML+CSS in a research proposal.

For HTML/CSS, PrinceXML produces beautiful results, but it is not free.

http://www.princexml.com/samples/

When I worked on Wall Street about 10 years ago, somebody tried to used it to make a daily report and got slapped by the IT dept. for using "unsupportable" software. There weren't as many freshly minted PhDs floating around then. Maybe the attitude would be different. The report looked great.

The prop desk I worked for a few years ago built a TeX-based report generator. The graphs were created with gnuplot. It all worked very well.

Early on at Amazon, the forms you got with your order was generated with TeX ( LaTeX? )

It was probably installed by ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davis_%28programmer%29 ), but he was gone by that point.

The system was running on a couple of the Sparcstations and at that time (97) the zon was switching to Alpha.

I remember looking at that the build system and thought that it was "unsupportable" by myself or any other systems admin there at that time.

Recently, I've wrote some docs in LaTeX and was told to convert it to Word/Confluence.

We split our time between consultancy and our startup projects. The consultancy side produces a lot of documents (specs, quotes, reports, etc.) Sometimes we write these collaboratively with the customer. Then we use Word. When we write them on our own we use Latex. We use XeLatex for pretty fonts and the very flexible memoir class. We have a standard template all our docs use. Latex is so much more productive than Word, due to abstraction, easy VCS integration, and living in our text editors.

Can somebody tell me what the primary use of TeX is and what the standard alternative is? I can't believe that it's Word, as I'm pretty sure Word is for something else (e.g. intra-office docs).

For serious publishing, the usual workflow is that authoring and editing happens in Word, and once the editing is finished the text is imported into software such as Indesign for typesetting.

With Tex-based publishing workflows, authoring and editing is typically done using Latex (in tandem with a Latex-aware text editor, and typesetting phase is carried out with a Tex-based form as well.

An alternative workflow used by several Context-based publishers (Context is an alternative format for Tex, now tied to Luatex) is to use one of several XML-based authoring software and turn the XML document into Context for typesetting.

TeX and LaTeX are the standard in some academic fields, and in closely-associated industrial situations. In Math, LaTeX is standard. It is close to that in CS, and pretty close to that in Physics. There are some other academic fields where it has a fan base (I think Linguistics is one.)

The standard alternative is Word.

Knew a couple people attempting to use it for an 8k self filing solution. Uploaded word docs get transformed and typeset behind the scenes then output to the SEC's version of HTML for filing.

I'd imagine Tex/LaTex would provide great productivity boosts for K-12 and university-level textbooks, assuming publishers (and authors?) actually knew how to use it..

From the stackexchange thread: """Probably not before you are hired but you can impress with your good looking reports, presentations etc. after you're hired."""

I don't think so. The stock standard LaTeX templates are not that good looking compared to the kind of reports presentations etc a competent guy versatile in graphic design (not necessarily a graphic designer) can achieve -- perhaps even using some ready made presentation/report template bundled with his office suite or third-party.

Slightly better typography is the main advantage, but people would fell asleep reading a LaTeX template report or presentation. Lack of color, imagery, drab looking charts and diagrams etc --unless you really dive full in and peruse all of LaTeX. And it's not like anyone sweats over typography details when reading a bloody report.

I think the commenter was thinking of Beamer, which does have some attractive layout in its standard suite.

Beautifying Latex and Beamer is really not that difficult. An issue, though, is that the techniques to do so are different to those used in standard graphic design.

If we're to judge from this:

http://www.hartwork.org/beamer-theme-matrix/

I wouldn't say that Beamer presentation themes are any better --actually worse--, than what's included with Pages/Powerpoint.

Check here for some cv far better that the boring standard LaTeX ones:

http://jobmob.co.il/blog/beautiful-resume-ideas-that-work/

It's not as if your potential boss will be delighted because the hyphenation spacing and kerning is just perfect --but a touch of cleverness and color can get far.

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