It's not easy. I've found that most people don't care about
typographic quality. The only people I've ever managed to convince
are those who were unhappy with their current system:

"How can I do X in Word?"

"Well, you can click here, then type this into the dialog box, then
tweak this thing until it looks right, then repeat that a dozen
times. Or you can switch to LaTeX, where you can simply type
this."

"Oh, and I do I do Y in Word?"

"Well, you can click here, then type this into the dialog box, then
tweak this thing until it looks right, then repeat that a dozen
times. Or you can switch to LaTeX, where you can simply type
this."

"Gack! This is too hard. Maybe I should give LaTeX a shot."

> 1) Insufficient figure placement algorithm.

Have you seen the magic float parameters in the UK TeX FAQ
(http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=floats)? I find that
those, or slight modifications, work pretty well at encouraging LaTeX
to place figures near the associated text without having to actually
force their placement.

> For instance, what about the HZ algorithms?

Use LuaLaTeX and the microtype package.

> What about hanging punctuation?

Use LuaLaTeX and the microtype package.

> What about context-sensitive kerning?

Hmmm...I don't know about this one, but I'd start by looking
at LuaLaTeX and the microtype package. ;-)

> What about full support for OpenType (including features such as
> Titling
> Alternates, Superscripts/Subscripts, or Fractions)?
> What about 3-letter kerning?

Apart from the three-letter kerning, I think these are all handled by
LuaLaTeX and the fontspec package.

> 4) TeX's native graphical capabilities are pitiful.

TikZ isn't too bad and is fairly well integrated. But if users want
an IDE anyway, as you later claim, then "native" doesn't really have
much meaning. Users just doodle their pictures and that's what gets
printed; they don't have to know the underlying representation.

> IMHO, TeX & Co., will eventually become extinct if they won't be able
> to
> import and understand the common graphics file formats natively(!),
> like SVG, EMF, JPEG, PNG,
> maybe even some proprietary binary formats like CorelDraw or Visio.

I'll grant you that it is frustrating that different TeX backends
handle different sets of graphics formats. It's not inconceivable,
though, for someone to write a LuaTeX-based package that uses the
ImageMagick library under the covers to convert a variety of formats
into ones that LuaTeX can handle. Or, you can cheat and use TeX's
\write18 feature to spawn off a helper program that converts graphics
formats on the fly. Or you can again apply the "delegate to IDE"
argument.

> But, let's face it: at a time when TeX-ing one page took about a
> minute, certain things were practically not possible, such as a global
> optimization for finding page breaks, or finding a global optimum for
> the
> distribution of figures across several pages.

Yes, those could be improved.

> "Bitmapped fonts are to typesetting what punch-card machines are to
> digital
> storage. They were necessary at one time, when no other viable
> technology was
> available, but they have long since been made obsolete. That they are
> still
> the default ... is at best a sign of laziness and conservatism among
> the
> latex crowd, or at worst an inept expression of adoration for Knuth."
> (Gordon Kindlmann)

I don't think bitmapped fonts are the default in any modern TeX
distribution. That is, when I installed TeX Live and started building
documents, I got Type 1 versions of all the basic fonts without having
to configure anything.

> The same is true for the 8.3 naming scheme everywhere.

I'm not sure what you mean by "everywhere". If you look at all of the
LaTeX style files included in TeX Live, for example, a third of them
don't follow the 8.3 naming scheme:

$ find /usr/local/share/texmf-dist/ -name "*.sty" | perl -e '$dos=$nondos=0; while (<>) {chomp; m,([^/]+)\.([^/.]+)$,; if (length($1)<=8 && length($2)<=3) {$dos++} else {$nondos++}} print "$dos DOS names, $nondos non-DOS names\n"'
2084 DOS names, 1081 non-DOS names

> 6) Exessive diversification:
>
> Another consequence of the "cast in stone" license of TeX
> seems to be an excessive diversification.
>
> There is TeX/LaTeX, and then there are all these other derivatives
> like Omega, eTeX, pdfTeX, ConTeXt, ant, Alpha, and what not.
>
> Maybe it's just because there is no "Linus Torvalds" for TeX.
>
> But all these forks are really a sad waste of effort and good ideas.

Your list contains a mixture of apples and oranges. See
http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=texthings for
clarification. However, to address the gist of your comment, many TeX
executables have subsumed others, and it seems to me that LuaLaTeX
(TeX + LaTeX + eTeX + pdfLaTeX + [arguably] Omega/Alpha/XeTeX + a less
horrific scripting language) is a strong contender for the one program
users need to know about.

> I think it would be about time for LaTeX/TeX/xdvi to use and support
> some standards natively, like afm/pfb, ttf, OpenType, and all the
> fonts that are installed in my platform (Mac, Windows, Linux) already.
> The later, in particular, should be supported by default.

Use LuaLaTeX and the fontspec package. I believe those do everything
you list above.

> 8) Umlauts.
>
> We are well in the 21st century, and I really think, it is high time
> that
> LaTeX, TeX, Bibtex, et al., use Unicode (UTF-8) once and for all
> and everywhere and from the ground up.

I believe LuaLaTeX now uses UTF-8. BibTeX doesn't, but there are
replacements that do (e.g., BibLaTeX).

> However, for a newbie it is pretty time-consuming to find the package
> needed for the problem at hand.
> Most of the time, that newbie has no idea how to install a package
> (where *is* that "suitable place where latex can find the .sty
> file"?).

TeX Live comes with pretty much every package a newbie would ever
need. I've heard that MikTeX has a nice package-management system
that takes care of downloading and installing new packages.

> Unless you write plain math texts with no
> figures and tables and the likes, you always need a handful of other
> packages. So why not just maintain a set of packages, that are
> integrated into every Latex format? Most of the packages described in
> the Companion are good candidates to be integrated into such a
> LaTeX2d format (that's why they are in the Companion ;-) There could
> even be an annual voting on comp.text.tex, what new packages should be
> integrated into latex.

The memoir class partially addresses this problem by incorporating the
functionality of a variety of packages related to document formatting.
This greatly cuts down on the number of packages one needs to load
into a document.

It might not be a bad idea to have a "load all useful packages"
package that new users could load. They still need to read the
documentation on how to use all the features, though, and if they have
that documentation (e.g., the LaTeX Companion), then that also says
what package to load so there might be a contradiction there.

> 10) Acceptance among the young.

> 11) No decent "IDE".

I'd lump these together. In the early days of PCs it wasn't uncommon
to read the documentation for a piece of software before using it.
Now, it's the rare program indeed that even comes with documentation
(not counting the Help menu as documentation). LaTeX scares new users
because they can't just click around a GUI until they find the feature
they're looking for (or a sufficient substitute, like changing font
parameters explicitly instead of choosing a "top-level section"
style). However, I'd argue that much of the ease of use provided by
IDEs and GUIs is illusory. As a program gets more complex, it becomes
just too hard to represent all the functionality graphically. Look at
Microsoft Word's new "ribbon" interface. I can never find *anything*
with that monstrosity. Yet it gives users the warm, fuzzy feeling
that if they click in enough places and with the right mouse button,
they'll eventually get to every available feature.

Often, I think that the LaTeX approach just doesn't jive well with an
IDE and that the young will never start using LaTeX. Maybe that's
because there aren't any really good IDEs for LaTeX; maybe that's
because I don't generally like IDEs. I use lots of custom macros,
logical markup, and miscellaneous packages in my documents. Take
those away from me, and at some point there's a lot less use in using
LaTeX. It becomes indistinguishable from a word processor, which it's
not.

> I wish, LaTeX will live and thrive for at least another 30 years,
> but I see no concerted major efforts to keep up with other
> document preparation tools.

I'd say to look harder. LuaLaTeX and some of the packages I've named
above address many of your concerns. Perhaps LaTeX doesn't get as
many downloads as Angry Birds, but it helps me get my work down a lot
less painfully than the alternatives.

-- Scott

coo...@nospamverizon.net

unread,

Mar 27, 2012, 10:30:13 PM3/27/12

to Una

Fine, but that isn't generally practical - or desirable - if the
document is a 'user manual'. For example, one of my books is a 1000+
page tome on a piece of statistical modelling software (written in the
flavour of 'teach yourself how to use program XYZ'). There are
(conservatively) at least that many figures interspersed throughout.
Thats not only a lot of plates (if I moved them all to plates), but, no
one would dream of writing a 'user manual' or 'step-by-step'
instructional book moving all the figures to plates. Any decent 'teach
yourself 'book' has a structure of

blah blah blah. And when you execute this command, the software will
respond with

<fig. 1>

unless you've specified parameters A, B and C, at which point you'll see

<fig. 2>

and so on. In my case, ~95% of the figures are screen captures, since
the application in question has a GUI front-end, and I want to 'show'
the reader what they'll see.

I would concur with the OP comment concerning figures, but I accept that
I'm torturing (La)TeX to be something it wasn't fully intended to be - a
DTP system. LaTeX is happiest, it seems, when the document is text,
equations and (somewhat grudgingly) tables only. The moment you start
embedding figures - and lots of them - in the document, things get
tricky(er). My better half is an InDesign whiz, and she periodically
pulls my chain by pointing out that a number of the formatting issues I
wrestle with in my book(s) would disappear if I used InDesign (or,
presumably Quark, or some other high-end DTP). They're even starting to
do rather well with equations.

I still like (love?) LaTeX (having used it for many years), and can't
argue with the price (especially compared with a full-blown commercial
DTP), but for heavily formatted documents, I do admit to an internal
monologue about the utility (beyond ego satiation) of wrestling this
package, or that, or coding up something on my own, to generate a
specific formatting convention (I have an editor who sends me 'requests'
that I'm now convinced he pulls from a list of things that are 'somewhat
annoying to do' in LaTeX).

And I would also concur that without the generous advice/help from the
denizens of this newsgroup, I'd probably have thrown in the towel years
ago.

Just my personal dollop of grist for the discussion mill.

JohnF

unread,

Mar 28, 2012, 1:38:46 AM3/28/12

to

Scott Pakin <scot...@pakin.org> wrote:
> On 03/27/2012 12:51 PM, Gabriel wrote:
>> In a nutshell, how do you convince someone
>> that they should use LaTeX?
>

> It's not easy. The only people I've ever managed to convince

> are those who were unhappy with their current system:

Sure. "Convincing" is the wrong thing to be doing in the first
place. At most, demonstrate, and then let the person make up
their own mind. Many people are justifiably happy with Word, etc:
it works well enough for their purposes, they already know how
to use it, all their friends/co-workers use it, and (last but
not least) they have a life they'd like to live rather than
spending their little free time learning yet another arcane
application. Latex is absolutely the wrong thing for such
people, and that's most people. The small subset of people
for whom latex is the right thing, and who aren't already
using it, will quickly figure that out for themselves once
you give them a little demonstration. If "convincing" beyond
demonstration is also necessary, then that's most likely
just the wrong person for latex.
By way of comparison, the windows versus linux debate
is pretty much exactly analogous. A happy windows user
most likely doesn't need to hear all about linux, and
almost certainly doesn't want to spend a whole lot of time
learning to use it halfway effectively when they're already
fully comfortable using windows.
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: j...@f.com where j=john and f=forkosh )

Marc van Dongen

unread,

Mar 28, 2012, 3:37:48 AM3/28/12

to

On Tuesday, March 27, 2012 7:51:50 PM UTC+1, Gabriel wrote:

Before I start, this post is too long. I don't have time to fully answer/address everything.

> 1) Insufficient figure placement algorithm.

I agree this may be a problem. It would be nice if there was more control to position figures.

> 2) Stagnant typographic quality.

> Ok, TeX has this superb paragraph layout engine - but what else?
> TeX evangelists (like myself ;) like to point out that TeX's paragraph
> typesetting is superior to any other typesetting software -
> but is that still true?
> Other software is getting better, too.
> (This document, for instance,
> http://www.nbcs.rutgers.edu/~hedrick/typography/typography.documenta.107515.indd.pdf
> was typeset with InDesign from Adobe.)

I know the document and it was typeset by somebody who knows what he's doing. The document is fairly straightforward, with text only. Documents with math are more difficult to typeset in an aestethically pleasing way. TeX doesn't do a bad job at it but there are problems. For example, see http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb28-1/tb88bazargan.pdf.

> For instance, what about the HZ algorithms?
> What about hanging punctuation?
> What about context-sensitive kerning?

pdflatex does provide support. Have a look at the microtype package.

> (This is stuff I've just read about in Bringhurst's wonderful
> book. ;-)
> What about full support for OpenType (including features such as
> Titling
> Alternates, Superscripts/Subscripts, or Fractions)?
> What about 3-letter kerning?

Have a look at the fontspec package. Also see Chapter 16 of LaTeX and Friends (http://csweb.ucc.ie/~dongen/LAF/LAF.html).

> But let's face it, how many users of LaTeX (who just want to get their
> job done)
> know about CTAN, let alone consider installing an extra package to
> improve the
> typographic quality?

Different users have different requirements so (La)TeX _has_ to be flexible. This is why LateX on its own cannot do the job. It is perfectly possible for each user to implement their own document class for their own document. Using this class is almost the same as using (La)TeX on its own. If they cannot implement a document class, they have to, well, use all these packages.

> 4) TeX's native graphical capabilities are pitiful.

Have a look at the tikz package. IIRC it's implemented on top of (pdf)tex.

> The same holds for bitmap graphics.
> TeX has never been able to import bitmap graphics, which is a
> problem in terms of smooth workflow.
> (Yes I know the standard arguments, like "tex only needs to know the
> bbox".)

You can't have it both ways: proper typography _and_ bitmaps:-)

> IMHO, TeX & Co., will eventually become extinct if they won't be able
> to
> import and understand the common graphics file formats natively(!),
> like SVG, EMF, JPEG, PNG,
> maybe even some proprietary binary formats like CorelDraw or Visio.

tikz supports SVG.

> 5) Aging of TeX:
>
> TeX is over 30 years old! It testifies to Knuth's abilities that it
> has served so
> well for such a long time as a powerful typesetting engine.

> In addition, some typographic points might not have been known to
> Knuth,
> or they might have emerged only in the recent past.
> For instance, hanging punctuation.

It's supported by microtype. What's more difficult is grid typesetting. It would be nice if (la)tex could do it. The grid package is a start but it didn't work for me.

> 6) Exessive diversification:
>
> Another consequence of the "cast in stone" license of TeX
> seems to be an excessive diversification.
>
> There is TeX/LaTeX, and then there are all these other derivatives
> like Omega, eTeX, pdfTeX, ConTeXt, ant, Alpha, and what not.
>
> Maybe it's just because there is no "Linus Torvalds" for TeX.

Perhaps it's because there are different requirements.

> 7) Fonts:

> Yes, there is the excellent fontinst manual and macros.

See the fontspec package.

> 8) Umlauts.
>
> We are well in the 21st century, and I really think, it is high time
> that
> LaTeX, TeX, Bibtex, et al., use Unicode (UTF-8) once and for all
> and everywhere and from the ground up.

I prefer using commands but the inputenc package provides support for UTF8. (I never used the package.)

> 9) "Standard" packages.

> However, for a newbie it is pretty time-consuming to find the package
> needed for the problem at hand.

Yes. But I don't see a way around it.

> Most of the time, that newbie has no idea how to install a package
> (where *is* that "suitable place where latex can find the .sty
> file"?).

See Chapters 17--19 of LaTeX and Friends. (You can read these chapters in http://csweb.ucc.ie/~dongen/LAF/LAF.pdf.

> 10) Acceptance among the young.

null/

> 11) No decent "IDE".

Do you _need_ an IDE? I'd argue no. I've been teaching LaTeX in the past couple of years and I always find that people using an IDE are _much_ slower than people using the command line. One of the reasons is that the command line users can use their familiar editor, whereas IDE users have to grab the mouse each time they want to ``do'' something.

Personally, I use vim. You can compile your document from vim and there's no need to use the mouse. I recently started using folds in vim and it's _great_ for LaTeX. You can program vim, so you can associate certain character sequences with (La)TeX command(s). For example, when I type `Ybf', I get:

\begin{frame}[fragile]
<CURSOR POSITION IS HERE>
\end{frame}

with the cursor in the position suggested by <CURSOR POSITION HERE>. Most IDE users have to do more to do the same. Also they have less control over the keyboard shortcuts that do equivalent things.

For Java I also use vim and since vim is the only editor I use, I know enough of it do do what I want.

Regards,

Marc van Dongen

Oliver Corff

unread,

Mar 28, 2012, 2:11:29 PM3/28/12

to

Gabriel <snoop...@googlemail.com> wrote:

: 1) Insufficient figure placement algorithm.

I can't say much about this issue since I usually get along with Âh]
or [t] or similar modifiers.

: 2) Stagnant typographic quality.

: For instance, what about the HZ algorithms?

: What about hanging punctuation?
: What about context-sensitive kerning?

: book. ;-)

: What about full support for OpenType (including features such as
: Titling
: Alternates, Superscripts/Subscripts, or Fractions)?
: What about 3-letter kerning?

Personally, I use XeTeX which has full support for all opentype
features. It will go a long way to do things the right way provided
the font is cooperative.

: 4) TeX's native graphical capabilities are pitiful.

TikZ is a wonderful tool for inline graphics which integrate perfectly
with your document code. For me it was such a relief to discover that
my numbered arguments can reshape graphics on the fly in-line, rather
than having to go through an external application for re-drawing my
graphics.

: 5) Aging of TeX:

: TeX is over 30 years old! It testifies to Knuth's abilities that it
: has served so
: well for such a long time as a powerful typesetting engine.

Reliability and portability above everything. Trustworthyness of a
platform can be an /extremely/ important factor for some users.

: In addition, some typographic points might not have been known to

: Knuth,
: or they might have emerged only in the recent past.
: For instance, hanging punctuation.

It's hard to tell fad from necessity unless you state the writing
system. Hanging punctuation is useful for Chinese and similar letters;
is it necessary anywhere else or is it just an interesting choice of
style or fashion?

: The same is true for the 8.3 naming scheme everywhere.

Which platform do you run? TeX itself was never BDSM-ed into 8.3 naming.

: 6) Exessive diversification:

: There is TeX/LaTeX, and then there are all these other derivatives

: like Omega, eTeX, pdfTeX, ConTeXt, ant, Alpha, and what not.

: Maybe it's just because there is no "Linus Torvalds" for TeX.

LuaTeX seems to have a good following these days, and XeTeX is a good
choice for people writing multi-lingual documents. Omega is history.

: 7) Fonts:

: Is it really necessary to read and understand 30+ pages of a manual,

: just to install a font? I shouldn't think so ....

It should not take reading 30+ pages.

: 8) Umlauts.

: We are well in the 21st century, and I really think, it is high time
: that
: LaTeX, TeX, Bibtex, et al., use Unicode (UTF-8) once and for all
: and everywhere and from the ground up.

Again, which system is your production platform? With XeTeX, LuaTeX and
probably other engines, you get UTF-8 out of the box, without any
tweaking etc. You can even mak UTF-8 characters /active/! Great e.g. for
typing a greek gamma that will automatically present its transliteration
depending on the environment.

: 9) "Standard" packages.

: One of the big strengths of Latex is CTAN, its maintainers,
: and, in particular, all the wonderful people who contribute packages
: and help on comp.text.tex!

: However, for a newbie it is pretty time-consuming to find the package
: needed for the problem at hand.

With all respect, no. You can do a keyword search at CTAN which will
come up with a very good selection of things to pick from in a
reasonable time and presentation format.

: packages. So why not just maintain a set of packages, that are

: integrated into every Latex format? Most of the packages described in
: the Companion are good candidates to be integrated into such a
: LaTeX2d format (that's why they are in the Companion ;-) There could
: even be an annual voting on comp.text.tex, what new packages should be
: integrated into latex.

Have a look at memoir.

: Here is a list of packages that I think might be candidates for

: integration:
: graphicx (of course),
: hyperref, natbib, amsmath & nath, booktabs, theorem, array,
: geometry, titlesec, tabularx, mdwlist, tocbibind, hyphenat, comment.

You can always create your personalized formats and load them at
document compile time.

: 10) Acceptance among the young.

Just show them what can be done. The ones who get it will immediately
ask: "How did you do it?", then you demonstrate it, tell them where to
download and they will happily texify their documents ever after. Forget
about the others. Not everybody thinks of his/her documents as abstract
entities that can be planned and expressed in a logical manner.

: 11) No decent "IDE".

Well, some things can certainly be improved, but then ... Using
TeX/LaTeX reflects some kind of a mindset for persons who think
that a console IS an IDE.

: The main problem might be that there is no "Linus" for TeX/LaTeX.

: (Another option to give Latex a boost might be a EU project, but I
: have no
: idea whether the EC would give funding for that.)

Linux versions (read: distributions) these days are as diverse as
TeX/LaTeX engines, but the kernel (TeX in TeX, the kernel in Linux)
is well defined; in TeX much more frozen than in Linux so that you
can always have a safe bet in terms of output.

Just my two cents.

Oliver.

--
Dr. Oliver Corff e-mail: co...@zedat.fu-berlin.de

Robin Fairbairns

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Mar 28, 2012, 3:25:49 PM3/28/12

to

Gabriel <snoop...@googlemail.com> writes:

> With this little ranting about LaTeX & Co, I would just like to spark
> the discussion as to where Latex & Co should go.
> I have long hesitated whether or not I should release these ramblings
> into the public, because I didn't want to tread on anybody's toes, or
> frustrate anybody (or get flamed ;-) ).

you seem to have provoked some useful thinking.
(as a whole, we tend not to flame other posters: we're all such lovely
cuddly people... ;-)

> [lots snipped]

it occurs to me that your question would be a good one for me to answer
in the uk faq (http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq). what do you think? what
would other people suggest i feed into such a question's answer?

personally, i suspect your head has been "down, working" too
comprehensively to notice some really good work that has been going on
in the last few years. i wouldn't claim that everything's suddenly
perfect, but we've had a lot of really useful contributions to our
tools, as practising texies -- microtype, biblatex/biber, pgf/tikz,
xe(la)tex and lua(la)tex spring to mind (i could probably go on, with a
few moments' thought). even the ide world seems to be developing quite
nicely (i'm one of those who tend to regard the terminal and unix "make"
as the happiest working environment, so i'm no judge of the ide stuff
that's now available).
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
sorry about all this posting. i'll go back to sleep in a bit.

Nasser M. Abbasi

unread,

Mar 28, 2012, 4:22:37 PM3/28/12

to

my 1.5 cents on the subject:

I love Latex, but it is really behind the times when it comes to
being 'web' friendly. I mean, exporting latex to html is
a really weak area for Latex.

In this day of web centric world (vs. the hard-copy printed pages
world) if a technology is not web friendly, then it will not
last for too long.

Most people browse and look for information on the web these days
and do get up and go to the library to look up books sitting on
shelves collecting dust :)

I use latex2html as the main tool for converting my latex reports
and documentsto html.

It works 'ok', but it is very old, does not support all of Latex
features, and only handful of people really know how it works in
and out (if that many. After all, it is written in Perl 15 years ago!),
and using it and installing is one of the hardest things to do.

(I tried many other options, nothing that really works well).

I wrote this document here to help with this:

http://12000.org/my_notes/l2hwin/index.htm

I just found out that Oracle wrote the new Java 7 SE specs in
DocBook:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-0-preface7.html

"This edition is the first to be written in the DocBook format.
Metadata in the XML markup forms a kind of static type system"

And I think the reason they did this (my guess) is that it was easier
to convert the final documentation to HTML (else Latex might have been
a better choice, I would think). Problem for me with DocBook is
that it is hard to use when you have lots of math, so that is why I
stick to Latex.

So, I hope the Latex community will pay more attention to this
weak area of Latex: Exporting to HTML should be much improved. A
robust, easy to install and use tool, which supports all of latex packages
is needed.

thanks
--Nasser

Bob Tennent

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Mar 28, 2012, 4:39:14 PM3/28/12

to

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:22:37 -0500, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
> my 1.5 cents on the subject:
>
> I love Latex, but it is really behind the times when it comes to
> being 'web' friendly. I mean, exporting latex to html is
> a really weak area for Latex.

First, PDF documents can be used on the web. But if you want html, the
htlatex script of the tex4ht package is very robust and configurable. Is
that one of the "many other options" you tried? What is it that didn't
work very well?

Bob T.

Nasser M. Abbasi

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Mar 28, 2012, 4:57:41 PM3/28/12

to

On 3/28/2012 3:39 PM, Bob Tennent wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:22:37 -0500, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
> > my 1.5 cents on the subject:
> >
> > I love Latex, but it is really behind the times when it comes to
> > being 'web' friendly. I mean, exporting latex to html is
> > a really weak area for Latex.
>
> First, PDF documents can be used on the web.

PDF is not as easy to use as HTML for browsing. I do not
like to download and open PDF documents when I can see the
same thing in HTML on-line.

> But if you want html, the
> htlatex script of the tex4ht package is very robust and configurable. Is
> that one of the "many other options" you tried? What is it that didn't
> work very well?
>

Yes, I tried both. Both has problems here and there, just like
Latex2html. For some things they work, for other things they do
not work. Installation is hard on windows, and many other issues.

I have tried many options for many years, I found latex2thml to
work best for me even with the problems it has.

Here is on issue I found with tex4ht as an example:

http://12000.org/my_notes/on_tex4ht_displayed_math/note.htm

The point I am making, is that export to HTML should be a main
focus, and not a side-one-person-project-scripty thing. The web
should be the new main target for Latex, and not paper printing.

The world is becoming, and has become an interactive, on-line,
mobile, andbrowsing universe.

The world of paper printing and book binding is the world of the
past. PDF is not a substitute for HTML.

--Nasser

terryc

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Mar 28, 2012, 5:19:10 PM3/28/12

to

Gabriel wrote:

> 5) Aging of TeX:
>
> TeX is over 30 years old! It testifies to Knuth's abilities that it
> has served so
> well for such a long time as a powerful typesetting engine.

<tic.Yep, lets just kill off all the old people.</tic>

The fact that it has been here for 50 years is one of the most powerful
arguments for using it. Meanwhile, editor after editor after wysiwig has
come and gone, even something as powerful as Wordperfect died.

In any case aren't all your points just a questio of soeone developing a
package?

Alain Ketterlin

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Mar 28, 2012, 5:44:17 PM3/28/12

to

"Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> writes:

[...]

> The point I am making, is that export to HTML should be a main
> focus, and not a side-one-person-project-scripty thing. The web
> should be the new main target for Latex, and not paper printing.

I completely disagree with this. If you want to produce HTML, use an
appropriate syntax, where tools will do the conversion for you. Docbook
is one, but there are others. Or simply type your texts in HTML
directly. And if you need reasonably looking maths, use mathjax or
something like that.

> The world is becoming, and has become an interactive, on-line,
> mobile, andbrowsing universe.

You seem to confuse "browsing" and "reading".

> The world of paper printing and book binding is the world of the
> past. PDF is not a substitute for HTML.

TeX is not about printing, it is about typesetting. HTML doesn't care
about typesetting, and CSS is not even decent in comparison with TeX.
You're mixing apples and oranges.

If you don't need TeX, then don't use TeX.

-- Alain.

Nasser M. Abbasi

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Mar 28, 2012, 6:07:26 PM3/28/12

to

On 3/28/2012 4:44 PM, Alain Ketterlin wrote:

>
> You seem to confuse "browsing" and "reading".
>

I really think it is you who is confusing them.

I bet more people go to wikipedia or google to lookup
something than run to the local library to find a book to
read about it.

>> The world of paper printing and book binding is the world of the
>> past. PDF is not a substitute for HTML.
>
> TeX is not about printing, it is about typesetting.

Yes, but it is page/paragraph centric. It was designed
for paper printing.

>HTML doesn't care
> about typesetting, and CSS is not even decent in comparison with TeX.
> You're mixing apples and oranges.
>

I am not mixing apples and oranges. I am simply saying the
tools for converting latex to html are weak. I am not
saying Latex itself should change, but the tools to convert
latex to html are not good.

> If you don't need TeX, then don't use TeX.

I need Latex, because it is best for math, but I also need to export
to HTML, because HTML is the final target. For many, HTML is the
final target since that is the most viewed target.

It does not matter how good latex itself is if the bridge
between latex to HTML remains weak.

--Nasser

Bob Tennent

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Mar 28, 2012, 6:14:11 PM3/28/12

to

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:07:26 -0500, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
>>
>> TeX is not about printing, it is about typesetting.
>
> Yes, but it is page/paragraph centric. It was designed
> for paper printing.
>
>>HTML doesn't care
>> about typesetting, and CSS is not even decent in comparison with TeX.
>> You're mixing apples and oranges.
>>
>
> I am not mixing apples and oranges. I am simply saying the
> tools for converting latex to html are weak. I am not
> saying Latex itself should change, but the tools to convert
> latex to html are not good.
>
>> If you don't need TeX, then don't use TeX.
>
> I need Latex, because it is best for math, but I also need to export
> to HTML, because HTML is the final target. For many, HTML is the
> final target since that is the most viewed target.
>
> It does not matter how good latex itself is if the bridge
> between latex to HTML remains weak.

I suggest you find a suitable development framework for the web and then
ask about exporting to LaTeX; that would be much more sensible than
expecting a system designed for high-quality typography to export to
html. If you want LaTeX-quality math on a web page, use MathJax.

T C (News Only)

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Mar 28, 2012, 6:16:00 PM3/28/12

to

Am 27.03.2012 20:51, schrieb Gabriel:
>
> In a nutshell, how do you convince someone that they should use LaTeX?
> (instead of Framemaker, InDesign, Word, etc.)
> Especially someone, whose documents do *not* contain math (or very
> little)?
> Yeah, right, there is the superior typographic quality of TeX's
> paragraph
> typesetting algorithm -- but read on ...
>

I've just been working on a paper which is a contribution to a
conference volume and I have to submit it in Word. Some 20 minutes ago
the software crashed and one hour of work is wasted. I have never
experienced such a crash in LaTeX or any related software tool.
Moreover, I'm afraid I will have forgotten how to insert the next figure
such that it looks comparable in style to the other figures already in
the text by clicking and searching through the menus. For me LaTeX is
much easier to work with, and I am not a computer scientist. So I think
that makes a good case for LaTeX: If you really want to typeset
something at an (almost) professional level and you are not a
professional computer scientist, then try LaTeX because it will be much
easier than Word.

Best regards,
Thomas

Nasser M. Abbasi

unread,

Mar 28, 2012, 6:24:50 PM3/28/12

to

On 3/28/2012 5:14 PM, Bob Tennent wrote:

>
> I suggest you find a suitable development framework for the web and then
> ask about exporting to LaTeX; that would be much more sensible than
> expecting a system designed for high-quality typography to export to
> html. If you want LaTeX-quality math on a web page, use MathJax.
>

I can't do that. I use Scientific word (SW) to write all my math
heavy documents since it is very easy to do it SW. SW generate
Latex files.

I convert these Latex file to HTML using latex2html, since SW
conversion to HTML is not good.

I do not write direct Latex myself. It will take me forever
to write the same equations by Latex myself if I do not
use SW.

I looked at MathJax before
but it does not fit with my setup I have with working with SW.

Any way, thanks for the suggestion.

--Nasser

Peter Flynn

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Mar 28, 2012, 6:46:24 PM3/28/12

to

On 27/03/12 19:51, Gabriel wrote:

> With this little ranting about LaTeX & Co, I would just like to
> spark the discussion as to where Latex & Co should go.

It's always good to start a rant, unless you're a troll :-)

> I have long hesitated whether or not I should release these
> ramblings into the public, because I didn't want to tread on
> anybody's toes, or frustrate anybody (or get flamed ;-) ).

This is Usenet. Since when did anyone worry about that? :-)

> [...] I'm afraid that won't happen unless some development efforts

> for TeX/LaTeX et al. are focused on the "real" problems.

Have you looked at the LaTeX3 Project?

> In a nutshell, how do you convince someone that they should use
> LaTeX? (instead of Framemaker, InDesign, Word, etc.) Especially
> someone, whose documents do *not* contain math (or very little)?
> Yeah, right, there is the superior typographic quality of TeX's
> paragraph typesetting algorithm -- but read on ...

Automation. I use LaTeX as an API for creating PDFs. All the other
systems have some degree of pattern-following ability, but none of them
are actually typographic programming languages. Frame, ID, Quark, etc
are fine if you want each page to be designed individually: magazines,
for example. 3B2 (or whatever it's called now) has the programmability
(originally based on TeX) but without the widespread community support.

30 years of GUIs has left the majority of computer users believing that
direct-intervention synchronous typographic interfaces (what people
inaccurately call WYSIWYG) are the *only* interface in existence. Even
some so-called "IT professionals" are entirely ignorant of things like
command lines and character-cell editors.

The result is that users assume that you have to see a document
displayed in its final form on the screen in order to do anything with
it. I have even had Linux users (!) open a PDF in Acrobat Reader or
equivalent, just in order to print it, instead of using the lp or lpr
command.

If you believe that you have to work that way, and your pages are
individually designed, you are probably happier with one of the standard
commercial page-design programs. Once you start finding that you are
doing the same task over and over again, you *might* discover macros and
keystroke-recorders, and at that stage you are ripe for discovering
[La]TeX. But many users dislike learning, and prefer to continue to do
stuff the long way round by hand instead; and many organisations are so
IT-illiterate that they tolerate this approach.

> 1) Insufficient figure placement algorithm.

This is a known defect. It should give a *much* higher preference to
placing them [h] before considering [t], [b], or [p]. In fact, judicious
re-setting of the page-fraction values can often fix this.

> The idea could be to allow figures to move forward and backward while
> being attached to the first reference (or some specially designated
> "anchor" point). The attachment to the anchor would be a "rubber
> band". Then, the user could have a few optimization parameters,
> like: "stiffness" of the rubber bands, number of figures allowed on a
> page, etc.

That sounds like a useful start to a new algorithm.

> In addition, Latex should swap floats if that allows for better
> placement in the sense of the above sketched optimization task.

If that means changing the order, then I think that's A Bad Idea. An
author finding the figure or table she expected to be 1 coming out as 2
is going to ditch LaTeX pretty fast.

> Maybe, figures & images should even become "first-class citizens" in
> TeX, not just Latex.

That would mean implementing the concept of a float in TeX, and I don't
think that's going to happen.

> This might (I guess) also help with other figure-related problems,
> such as wrapping figures.

I have long considered that floats should have a controllable width, so
that small (narrow) figures and tables could be wrapped in text. This
would mean that they need to be re-instantiated as equivalent to a
character, like a tabular environment is, and that the presence of such
an object in mid-textstream (suitably labelled for l/c/r positioning)
should make it wrap automatically.

> 2) Stagnant typographic quality.

>
> It seems to me that there are no major advancements of TeX/LaTeX in
> the typographic direction. Please let me know if I'm wrong.

The work on microtype adjustments in pdflatex is one example.

> For instance, what about the HZ algorithms?

I think someone has implemented this in LuaTeX.

> What about hanging punctuation?

Do-able by hand from the start, but I think the microtype adjustments in
pdflatex include it.

> What about context-sensitive kerning?

Difficult when the engine (TeX) only knows the height and width of the
character. Doesn't XeTeX implement this?

> What about full support for OpenType (including features such as
> Titling Alternates, Superscripts/Subscripts, or Fractions)? What
> about 3-letter kerning?

XeTeX. Coming to a distribution near you.

> But let's face it, how many users of LaTeX (who just want to get
> their job done) know about CTAN, let alone consider installing an
> extra package to improve the typographic quality?

Most of the commonly-used ones are preinstalled in modern distributions,
so it's just the effort of typing \usepackage -- and the knowledge of
what each of the 4,233 packages currently listed at http://ctan.org/pkg
can do.

Jim Hefferon maintains a page at http://ctan.org/edit_keywords/front/
where you can suggest additional characterisations for a package (for
example "typographic").

> 4) TeX's native graphical capabilities are pitiful.
>
> I believe this is one of the major reasons why graphics never really
> has been integrated with TeX/LaTeX.

Right. But it's a typesetter, not a drawing package. Line art, and even
more, halftone art, has no place in a typesetter. I think what you are
looking for is an editing interface which lets you add artwork
seamlessly as if it was native. That's perfectly do-able (even Word
manages it, rather crudely). It just needs someone to write the code.

> The same holds for bitmap graphics. TeX has never been able to import
> bitmap graphics, which is a problem in terms of smooth workflow.

I'm not clear what this means. \includegraphics has no problems with
bitmaps, either EPS or PDF/JPG/PNG depending on your output engine.

If you mean you want the bitmap binary code embedded in the source, then
you'd need a kludge like Word originally tried with the first cut at
OOXML (Word 2003), where it embedded the Base64 in the XML. Even they
saw the light and removed it to a media subdirectory when they
implemented the .docx zip format.

> However, the world is becoming more and more graphical. Why shouldn't
> bitmap and line art graphics be incorporated into TeX and/or LaTeX
> native?

Technically they could, of course, using Base64 or equivalent. I just
don't want to have to scroll past that lot when editing in a
non-typographic editor.

> IMHO, TeX & Co., will eventually become extinct if they won't be
> able to import and understand the common graphics file formats
> natively(!), like SVG, EMF, JPEG, PNG, maybe even some proprietary
> binary formats like CorelDraw or Visio.

SVG should be no technical problem as it's XML. EMF is a pain in the
butt, and easy to convert to PDF, but I take your point. In either case
someone just needs to write the code. JPG and PNG have already worked
for years in pdflatex. Proprietary binary formats usually need a license
fee paying, and may be encumbered with legal restrictions. I'm
unconvinced about that.

I'm still worried about your use of the word "import", though. It
implies that the image would become part of the .tex file, which is
probably A Bad Idea (see note about .docx files above).

> I believe, so long as TeX doesn't understand line graphics natively,
> including annotated line art will always be cumbersome and just not
> quite 100% functional.

Again, this is an interface problem. There is no reason why someone
can't write an editor that does precisely this, so that callouts can be
attached and will remain with the image when you move it.

> Especially, if you want to exchange documents together with drawings
> and bitmaps across platforms and TeX distributions.

Perhaps a .texx format would be a good idea: a zip file like .docx and
.odt, containing the .tex file, any non-CTAN classes or packages, and
any images or other data.

> The PGF package might be a good starting point. That way, other
> software would have a standard way to export graphics to LaTeX (such
> as Gnuplot, Matlab, drawing editors, etc. etc.).

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
I don't use PGF but I believe it is very good. My concern would be that
it is the format du jour, and in 2020 will need to be scrapped in favour
of something else, thereby invalidating millions of documents.

There are already robust and well-supported vector formats in EPS and
PDF, which are exportable and importable from graphics packages like
Corel Draw and Inkscape. I can't speak as to GNUplot and MatLab, though,
but surely the mathematicians and engineers of the world could come up
with something.

> And, in the long term, it would even be possible to integrate a
> drawing editor into a "LaTeX IDE". (I am envisioning something like:
> I double click on a \begin{drawing} envrinoment, and up pops a
> drawing editor, and when I close the drawing program, the latex code
> reflecting the drawing is changed in the original Latex source ...)

As I said, this is an editor interface problem, solvable by someone just
writing it.

> 5) Aging of TeX:

>
> Today, many more optimizations could be performed (possibly
> optionally switched on by the user).

I think both XeTeX and pdflatex do some of this already.

> In addition, some typographic points might not have been known to
> Knuth, or they might have emerged only in the recent past. For
> instance, hanging punctuation.

That has been around since the early days of printing.

> (TeX's age is probably also the reason why it never has gotten
> powerful graphical capabilities --- in an era when X and Postscript
> etc. were a long time away, such things were just not practically
> possible...)

TeX: 1978
PS: 1982
X: 1984

> Another problem resulting from this "cast-in-stone" "license"

This really is the core of it, and I think it's the principal reason
behind NTS and LaTeX3.

> Hyperref [...] But, in the 21st century, hyperlinks should be an

> integral part of any kind of document preparation system, shouldn't
> it?

Yep. Like \includegraphics{http://www.foo.bar/image.png}

> Another issue is the extreme "backwards compatibility" (I would like
> to say "paranoia"). Here is a quote that expresses this quite nicely
> with the example of the bitmapped fonts: "Bitmapped fonts are to
> typesetting what punch-card machines are to digital storage. They
> were necessary at one time, when no other viable technology was
> available, but they have long since been made obsolete. That they
> are still the default ... is at best a sign of laziness and
> conservatism among the latex crowd, or at worst an inept expression
> of adoration for Knuth."

I think this demonstrates a fairly fundamental misunderstanding: TeX
neither knows nor cares how your output driver instantiates a glyph. All
it wants is the height and width, and some ancillary information like
kerning, and that comes from the .tfm file.

It's the output driver that worries about font file formats, and as I
understand it, all the current distributions of pdflatex come with Type
1 outlines as standard, and the generation of bitmaps hasn't been the
default for some considerable time.

> The same is true for the 8.3 naming scheme everywhere.

Nothing in TeX requires an 8.3 filename as far as I know. It probably
*does* assume a dot between the filename and the extension, though.

What does need stamping on hard, though, is spaces in filenames :-)

> 6) Exessive diversification:
>
> Another consequence of the "cast in stone" license of TeX
> seems to be an excessive diversification.
>
> There is TeX/LaTeX, and then there are all these other derivatives
> like Omega, eTeX, pdfTeX, ConTeXt, ant, Alpha, and what not.

This is experimentation. It's endemic to free software. The successful
implementations survive, and the unsuccessful die off.

> 7) Fonts:
>
> Over the years, I have literally spent several man weeks in total to
> install fonts for Latex.

I'm sorry to hear that. I install new fonts frequently, according to
customer requirements. My bash font installer for Type 1 fonts (cdvf)
has been available for years, and I wrote about it in TUGboat. OK, so
it's Linux only, and it's based on the ancient Bitstream 500-font
CD-ROM, but that's a couple of changes to directory names in the code.
This not only makes the font files and installs them, but writes the
.sty and .fd files, and updates the font cache.

> Yes, there is the excellent fontinst manual and macros.
>
> Still, how many people succeed in installing a new font?

Very few.

> And of those that do, how many would succeed without comp.text.tex?
> ;-) Looking at comp.text.tex, it doesn't seem too many, IMHO.
> [Footnote: Actually, I think, without all these lots of helpful and
> kind people on comp.text.tex, LaTeX et al. would be pretty much dead
> by now ...]

Yep.

>
> Is it really necessary to read and understand 30+ pages of a manual,
> just to install a font? I shouldn't think so ....

No. Just typing cdvf <foundry> <fontname> <filename>,<filename>,...
should be enough.

> Or, as another example, take the font naming scheme: why on earth
> should one rename fonts and font files?! Just because of the 8.3 file
> name length limit?

It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the 8.3 filename
restriction (which I agree should be trashed). It's to do with the idea
of embedding the font attributes in the font filename, instead of in Yet
Another Ancillary File (eg .info).

Karl would be the first to admit that one letter for the foundry (maker)
and two letters for the typeface is probably inadequate now.

No problem: write an updated spec, instantiate it in code, and post it
somewhere for people to try.

But bear in mind that XeTeX simply makes this problem go away.

> I think it would be about time for LaTeX/TeX/xdvi to use and support
> some standards natively, like afm/pfb, ttf, OpenType, and all the
> fonts that are installed in my platform (Mac, Windows, Linux) already.
> The later, in particular, should be supported by default.

You do appear to be unaware of XeTeX.

> 8) Umlauts.
>
> We are well in the 21st century, and I really think, it is high time
> that LaTeX, TeX, Bibtex, et al., use Unicode (UTF-8) once and for
> all and everywhere and from the ground up.

Yes, I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately it's only recently that some
operating systems have deigned to use UTF8 instead of their native crap
(I mention no names, MacRoman8 and Windows-1252 :-) and a large number
of computer scientists are only vaguely aware of anything other than
US-ASCII.

Knuth was very accepting of the plea to go to 8bit, way back in the dawn
of time (Exeter Conference?). Perhaps an approach to move to native
multibyte would also work. But then, NTS and LaTeX3 will have a view on
this already.

> 9) "Standard" packages.
>
> One of the big strengths of Latex is CTAN, its maintainers,
> and, in particular, all the wonderful people who contribute packages
> and help on comp.text.tex!
>
> However, for a newbie it is pretty time-consuming to find the package
> needed for the problem at hand.

The latest changes to the CTAN interface make it much easier.

But as I said, all current full distributions include pretty much
everything that most users want.

> Most of the time, that newbie has no idea how to install a package
> (where *is* that "suitable place where latex can find the .sty
> file"?).

This is unaccountably missing from most documentation. Now that TDS has
stopped moving around so much, it's time all documenters agreed:

Unix and GNU/Linux: ~/texmf/tex/latex/<packagename>
Mac OS X: ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/<packagename>
Windows: C:\texmf\tex\latex\<packagename>

On Unix-based systems (Linux and OS X) there is no need to run texhash
afterwards. On Windows, I know MiKTeX requires the tree to be added to
its config, and updated with the FNDB. I assume TeX Live does not
require this.

> Unless you write plain math

Why math? I never use the stuff.

> texts with no figures and tables and the
> likes, you always need a handful of other packages. So why not just
> maintain a set of packages, that are integrated into every Latex
> format?

They are. What on earth are you using?

> 10) Acceptance among the young.
>
> As a Latex user, one suddenly has to deal with things none ever has
> to deal with when using another word processor: going to CTAN to find
> a package that offers a certain functionality, or to try to find the
> documentation for a certain feature that is provided by a certain
> package.

On the contrary, I know Word and OO/LO users who do this regularly,
installing plugin after plugin...

> Now, if that is so difficult, what is the future of LaTeX among the
> young generation, who has grown up with iPhone and video games? They
> take this kind of ease-of-use for granted.

This is why the auto-download-and-install was implemented in MiKTeX, and
now as tlmgr in TeX Live. You do seem to be rather out of date with
your information.

> 11) No decent "IDE".

Agreed. You just need to write one. LyX is clever, but exposes far too much.

> Summary:

*plonk*

///Peter

Luis Rivera

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Mar 28, 2012, 7:40:24 PM3/28/12

to

On Mar 27, 12:51 pm, Gabriel <snoopy.6...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> In a nutshell, how do you convince someone that they should use LaTeX?
> (instead of Framemaker, InDesign, Word, etc.)
> Especially someone, whose documents do *not* contain math (or very
> little)?
> Yeah, right, there is the superior typographic quality of TeX's
> paragraph
> typesetting algorithm -- but read on ...
>

Your rants are long, so I'll try to regroup them to make my reply
simpler.

> 7) Fonts:
>
> 8) Umlauts.
>
> 2) Stagnant typographic quality.
>

These problems are currently addressed by engines like XeTeX&LuaTeX
with microtype, as someone else has said in this thread.

> 1) Insufficient figure placement algorithm.
>

> 4) TeX's native graphical capabilities are pitiful.
>

Those two may be explained by the design constraints: TeX was not
designed to handle graphics or figures: it was designed to typeset
books with mathematics only, and automatically. What you want is a
replacement for TeX with built-in graphics capabilities. LuaTeX seems
to provide them (via MetaPost).

> 6) Exessive diversification:
>
>
> 9) "Standard" packages.
>

I also resent these two items. I remember when an extremely simple TeX
distro (emTeX) could easily fit in two floppies (fonts in fli format
included) and was able to typeset the woven source code of TeX and MF
(I suspect it was able to typeset the full Computers and Typesetting
series from Addison-Wesley). Two floppies at the time was tiny
(<2.8Mb), compared with the "bloated" WinWord 6.0 (6 floppies). Now a
CD (near extinct tecnhology) does not have enough room to fit either
of the two most popular distributions (TeXLive and MikTeX). I wonder
how large a tiny LuaTeX only distro could be, i.e. depending only on
the system's outline fonts and deprived of all MetaFonts and all the
"contributed" LaTeX packages.

> 5) Aging of TeX:

>
> 11) No decent "IDE".
>

> 10) Acceptance among the young.
>

The chief issue here is that *TeX* is not a word processor, but a
batch processing typesetter. It can't have a decent GUI or perhaps a
decent IDE (point and clilck) because that's not the way it works. You
need another GUI program to fit those needs, and InDesign etc. fill
that gap.

>
>
> Summary:
>
> TeX, LaTeX et al. have come a long way.
> They are still quite powerful and versatile, and the user community
> and the
> developer community are very active.
> I wish, LaTeX will live and thrive for at least another 30 years,
> but I see no concerted major efforts to keep up with other
> document preparation tools.
>

In a nutshell: you convince people to try TeX if they are ready to
withdraw from GUI mentality, and if they need to typeset the maths
"for free". Other than that, they _should_ stick to their
wordprocessors, unless they are preparing the final copy of the
publication for the press. Given the documented abuse/misuse of LaTeX
by authors, no wonder why some publishing companies are reluctant to
accept contributions in LaTeX.

In my experience it is precisely the addiction to GUIs what scares
most people away from La/TeX. It is hard to teach people to break
bones if they are used to ground beef.

Cheers,

Luis.

Lee Rudolph

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Mar 28, 2012, 8:44:02 PM3/28/12

to

"Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> writes:

>On 3/28/2012 5:14 PM, Bob Tennent wrote:
>
>>
>> I suggest you find a suitable development framework for the web and then
>> ask about exporting to LaTeX; that would be much more sensible than
>> expecting a system designed for high-quality typography to export to
>> html. If you want LaTeX-quality math on a web page, use MathJax.
>>
>
>I can't do that. I use Scientific word (SW) to write all my math
>heavy documents since it is very easy to do it SW. SW generate
>Latex files.

I haven't used Scientific Word, but long ago I sometimes had to
use other, similar things that produced (not La)TeX.

It was *terrible* TeX.

I suspect that SW generates bad LaTeX (you say, below, that
SW produces bad HTML).

>I convert these Latex file to HTML using latex2html, since SW
>conversion to HTML is not good.
>
>I do not write direct Latex myself. It will take me forever
>to write the same equations by Latex myself if I do not
>use SW.

After several forevers, you might well be able to produce
"the same equations" *better* than SW does; and (here I'm
just guessing) if they're *enough* better, latex2html might
produce good HTML.

>I looked at MathJax before
>but it does not fit with my setup I have with working with SW.

How about John Forkosh's stuff (which I've forgotten the name
of)?

Lee Rudolph

Robert Heller

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Mar 28, 2012, 8:55:21 PM3/28/12

to

At Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:22:37 -0500 "Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> wrote:

>
> my 1.5 cents on the subject:
>
> I love Latex, but it is really behind the times when it comes to
> being 'web' friendly. I mean, exporting latex to html is
> a really weak area for Latex.
>
> In this day of web centric world (vs. the hard-copy printed pages
> world) if a technology is not web friendly, then it will not
> last for too long.
>
> Most people browse and look for information on the web these days
> and do get up and go to the library to look up books sitting on
> shelves collecting dust :)
>
> I use latex2html as the main tool for converting my latex reports
> and documentsto html.

tex4ht works even better.

OTOH, TeX/LaTeX is really poorly suited to creating web pages. (And
MS-Word and OpenOffice are actually *worse*.) 'The Web' really, really
a vastly different medium in many ways. TeX/LaTeX and in fact Word
Processors as well are geared toward *static* printed documents --
something that is (logically) printed on paper (aka 'carved in stone').
The web is a dynamic and interactive medium.

>
> It works 'ok', but it is very old, does not support all of Latex
> features, and only handful of people really know how it works in
> and out (if that many. After all, it is written in Perl 15 years ago!),
> and using it and installing is one of the hardest things to do.

Check out tex4ht. It actually uses the TeX engine itself to do the
conversion.

>
> (I tried many other options, nothing that really works well).
>
> I wrote this document here to help with this:
>
> http://12000.org/my_notes/l2hwin/index.htm
>
> I just found out that Oracle wrote the new Java 7 SE specs in
> DocBook:
>
> http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-0-preface7.html
>
> "This edition is the first to be written in the DocBook format.
> Metadata in the XML markup forms a kind of static type system"
>
> And I think the reason they did this (my guess) is that it was easier
> to convert the final documentation to HTML (else Latex might have been
> a better choice, I would think). Problem for me with DocBook is
> that it is hard to use when you have lots of math, so that is why I
> stick to Latex.
>
> So, I hope the Latex community will pay more attention to this
> weak area of Latex: Exporting to HTML should be much improved. A
> robust, easy to install and use tool, which supports all of latex packages
> is needed.
>
> thanks
> --Nasser
>

--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 / hel...@deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

Robert Heller

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Mar 28, 2012, 8:55:22 PM3/28/12

to

At Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:07:26 -0500 "Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> wrote:

>
> On 3/28/2012 4:44 PM, Alain Ketterlin wrote:
>
> >
> > You seem to confuse "browsing" and "reading".
> >
>
> I really think it is you who is confusing them.
>
> I bet more people go to wikipedia or google to lookup
> something than run to the local library to find a book to
> read about it.

As a computer programmer, I much prefer *books* for programming
documentation. It is much more convenient when coding. If I don't have
a hardcopy book available, a PDF will sometimes to. I really, really
prefer man pages as an 'on-line' document method. Having *programming*
documentation in HTML sucks. OTOH, I use Google and Wikipedia for
general knowledge lookup and other stuff. "One Size" DOES NOT fit ALL.

>
> >> The world of paper printing and book binding is the world of the
> >> past. PDF is not a substitute for HTML.
> >
> > TeX is not about printing, it is about typesetting.
>
> Yes, but it is page/paragraph centric. It was designed
> for paper printing.
>
> >HTML doesn't care
> > about typesetting, and CSS is not even decent in comparison with TeX.
> > You're mixing apples and oranges.
> >
>
> I am not mixing apples and oranges. I am simply saying the
> tools for converting latex to html are weak. I am not
> saying Latex itself should change, but the tools to convert
> latex to html are not good.
>
> > If you don't need TeX, then don't use TeX.
>
> I need Latex, because it is best for math, but I also need to export
> to HTML, because HTML is the final target. For many, HTML is the
> final target since that is the most viewed target.
>
> It does not matter how good latex itself is if the bridge
> between latex to HTML remains weak.
>
> --Nasser
>

Lee Rudolph

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Mar 28, 2012, 8:56:30 PM3/28/12

to

Peter Flynn <pe...@silmaril.ie> writes:

>> What about hanging punctuation?
>
>Do-able by hand from the start, but I think the microtype adjustments in
>pdflatex include it.

And they do it very well. I learned about hanging punctuation 50 years
ago (in my USAn junior-high-school print shop course--with lead type,
quoins, and the whole business), tried (with mixed success, and enormous
effort) to use it 40 years ago (when I was involved with a USAn "small
press" [still going!], and IBM compositors with more expensive versions
of the Selectric "golfballs" --> photo-offset [with *real* cut-and-paste
{though not literal paste: rubber cement}] were what we could afford),
and *finally* got it *right* just this year, thanks to microtype.

If I could remember the name of my print shop teacher, I'd drop him a
line, if there were any likelihood he is still alive, which there isn't.

Lee Rudolph

Helmut Elbers

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Mar 29, 2012, 6:32:10 AM3/29/12

to

Am 28.03.2012 07:38, schrieb JohnF:
> Scott Pakin<scot...@pakin.org> wrote:
>> On 03/27/2012 12:51 PM, Gabriel wrote:
>>> In a nutshell, how do you convince someone
>>> that they should use LaTeX?
>>
>> It's not easy. The only people I've ever managed to convince
>> are those who were unhappy with their current system:
>
> Sure. "Convincing" is the wrong thing to be doing in the first
> place. At most, demonstrate, and then let the person make up
> their own mind. Many people are justifiably happy with Word, etc:
> it works well enough for their purposes, they already know how
> to use it, all their friends/co-workers use it, and (last but
> not least) they have a life they'd like to live rather than
> spending their little free time learning yet another arcane
> application. Latex is absolutely the wrong thing for such
> people, and that's most people.

Don't be so pessimistic! I think the choice of the editor or frontend
can make the beginning of unsing LaTeX easier. Give LyX a try! Klick
here, klick there, and get much better results than in Word, OO etc.

Guenter Milde

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Mar 29, 2012, 6:56:53 AM3/29/12

to

On 2012-03-28, Peter Flynn wrote:
> On 27/03/12 19:51, Gabriel wrote:

>> Another issue is the extreme "backwards compatibility" (I would like
>> to say "paranoia"). Here is a quote that expresses this quite nicely
>> with the example of the bitmapped fonts: "Bitmapped fonts are to
>> typesetting what punch-card machines are to digital storage. They
>> were necessary at one time, when no other viable technology was
>> available, but they have long since been made obsolete. That they
>> are still the default ... is at best a sign of laziness and
>> conservatism among the latex crowd, or at worst an inept expression
>> of adoration for Knuth."

> I think this demonstrates a fairly fundamental misunderstanding: TeX
> neither knows nor cares how your output driver instantiates a glyph. All
> it wants is the height and width, and some ancillary information like
> kerning, and that comes from the .tfm file.

> It's the output driver that worries about font file formats, and as I
> understand it, all the current distributions of pdflatex come with Type
> 1 outlines as standard, and the generation of bitmaps hasn't been the
> default for some considerable time.

The problem is that with the recommended use of T1 font encoding
(required for true umlauts etc.) the default fonts are bitmapped EC fonts:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{fixltx2e}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\begin{document}
Hello world.
\end{document}

To solve this, you need to either load the package lmodern or install the
CM-Super fonts...

Günter

Lars Madsen

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Mar 29, 2012, 7:02:11 AM3/29/12

to

Isn't that only on MikTeX?

TeXLive use CM-super by default

--

/daleif (remove RTFSIGNATURE from email address)

Memoir and mh bundle maintainer
LaTeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
LaTeX book: http://www.imf.au.dk/system/latex/bog/ (in Danish)
Remember to post minimal examples, see URL below
http://www.minimalbeispiel.de/mini-en.html

Guenter Milde

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Mar 29, 2012, 7:03:41 AM3/29/12

to

On 2012-03-28, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
> On 3/28/2012 5:14 PM, Bob Tennent wrote:

>> I suggest you find a suitable development framework for the web and then
>> ask about exporting to LaTeX; that would be much more sensible than
>> expecting a system designed for high-quality typography to export to
>> html. If you want LaTeX-quality math on a web page, use MathJax.

> I can't do that. I use Scientific word (SW) to write all my math
> heavy documents since it is very easy to do it SW. SW generate
> Latex files.

> I convert these Latex file to HTML using latex2html, since SW
> conversion to HTML is not good.

> I do not write direct Latex myself. It will take me forever
> to write the same equations by Latex myself if I do not
> use SW.

You might try LyX, which since version 2 includes native HTML export
(in addition to the superb "elyxer" lyx->html converter).

Günter

Uwe Siart

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Mar 29, 2012, 7:03:51 AM3/29/12

to

"Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> writes:

> It will take me forever to write the same equations by Latex myself if
> I do not use SW.

This is again and again interesting to see. I could make all the same
assertion with »LaTeX« and »SW« swapped.

--
Uwe

Guenter Milde

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Mar 29, 2012, 7:08:38 AM3/29/12

to

On 2012-03-28, Scott Pakin wrote:
> On 03/27/2012 12:51 PM, Gabriel wrote:

> I don't think bitmapped fonts are the default in any modern TeX
> distribution. That is, when I installed TeX Live and started building
> documents, I got Type 1 versions of all the basic fonts without having
> to configure anything.

Did you install CM-Super or don't you use T1 font encoding?

Günter

Lars Madsen

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Mar 29, 2012, 7:13:47 AM3/29/12

to

>>
>> To solve this, you need to either load the package lmodern or install the
>> CM-Super fonts...
>>
>> Günter
>
> Isn't that only on MikTeX?
>
> TeXLive use CM-super by default
>
>

Yet another reason I do not recommend MikTeX to our Windows users.

Timothy Murphy

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Mar 29, 2012, 7:35:18 AM3/29/12

to

Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:

> I love Latex, but it is really behind the times when it comes to
> being 'web' friendly. I mean, exporting latex to html is
> a really weak area for Latex.

Actually, maths in PDF on the web is OK, isn't it?
It's a bit difficult abstracting text, if you want to,
but that's a feature of PDF.

Does MathWorld use latex2html?
I always avoid MathWorld postings if I can,
as I know they are likely to be painful to read,
with long waits for equations to come on the screen.
Though I think it has got a lot better in recent years,
or maybe my laptop has got faster.

I've been really impressed in the last few years
by the quality of student project-presentations,
using beamer.

I think I disagree or don't understand
everything the OP said,
except that I have some sympathy with his comment on CTAN.

I feel somewhat guilty saying this,
as I regard Robin Fairbairns and his cohort
as among the saints of LaTeX,
probably in the ninth sphere (The Primum Mobile: The Angels)
together with Donald Knuth.

But I do wish I could just say "tum update" as I say "yum update",
and all my LaTeX packages would be brought up to date automagically.
And I find the catalogue slightly difficult to navigate,
though again I greatly admire the work that has gone into it.

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College Dublin

T3X

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Mar 29, 2012, 8:32:18 AM3/29/12

to

On Mar 29, 12:35 pm, Timothy Murphy <gayle...@alice.it> wrote:
> But I do wish I could just say "tum update" as I say "yum update",
> and all my LaTeX packages would be brought up to date automagically.

Hmm? Doesn't "tlmgr update -all" work for you?

Cheers,

Tomek

Ulrike Fischer

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Mar 29, 2012, 9:13:23 AM3/29/12

to

Am Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:02:11 +0200 schrieb Lars Madsen:

>> The problem is that with the recommended use of T1 font encoding
>> (required for true umlauts etc.) the default fonts are bitmapped EC fonts:

>> To solve this, you need to either load the package lmodern or install the
>> CM-Super fonts...

> Isn't that only on MikTeX?

> TeXLive use CM-super by default

It depends on the installation type. The full miktex has also the
cm-super fonts. If you install only the basic version you must
install the cm-super fonts manually with the package manager or
import it from a previous miktex version (it's a large package after
all).

--
Ulrike Fischer

Lars Madsen

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Mar 29, 2012, 9:18:14 AM3/29/12

to

The last time I tried to install MikTeX it did not install everything
eventhough we asked it to (or were lead to beleave that it would install
everything). Then afterwards we asked it to compile a memoir document
and it had to go online to get memoir.

So I've given up on MikTeX and does not recommend it to our users.

Robin Fairbairns

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Mar 29, 2012, 9:22:47 AM3/29/12

to

Lee Rudolph <lrud...@panix.com> writes:

> "Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> writes:
>
>>On 3/28/2012 5:14 PM, Bob Tennent wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I suggest you find a suitable development framework for the web and then
>>> ask about exporting to LaTeX; that would be much more sensible than
>>> expecting a system designed for high-quality typography to export to
>>> html. If you want LaTeX-quality math on a web page, use MathJax.
>>
>>I can't do that. I use Scientific word (SW) to write all my math
>>heavy documents since it is very easy to do it SW. SW generate
>>Latex files.
>
> I haven't used Scientific Word, but long ago I sometimes had to
> use other, similar things that produced (not La)TeX.
>
> It was *terrible* TeX.
>
> I suspect that SW generates bad LaTeX (you say, below, that
> SW produces bad HTML).

sw has a curious take on latex, but no worse than many human writers
... except that it has various built-in oddities that make it damnably
difficult to use with any other than sw latex. ime, anyway.

>>I convert these Latex file to HTML using latex2html, since SW
>>conversion to HTML is not good.
>>
>>I do not write direct Latex myself. It will take me forever
>>to write the same equations by Latex myself if I do not
>>use SW.
>
> After several forevers, you might well be able to produce
> "the same equations" *better* than SW does; and (here I'm
> just guessing) if they're *enough* better, latex2html might
> produce good HTML.
>
>>I looked at MathJax before
>>but it does not fit with my setup I have with working with SW.
>
> How about John Forkosh's stuff (which I've forgotten the name
> of)?

mathtex, which has superseded the earlier mimetex.

both are available from ctan.

however, they produce nothing better than you can achieve by using the
preview package, which is the way i tend to go. they're good for
embedding in a web server. i tend not to serve mathematics from my web
server(s) (there ain't no-one wants to read mathematics written by me,
any longer. i doubt anyone has, since i did the final exams of my
degree -- the poor examiners had to read the stuff, i suppose.)
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
sorry about all this posting. i'll go back to sleep in a bit.

Ulrike Fischer

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Mar 29, 2012, 9:28:02 AM3/29/12

to

Am Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:18:14 +0200 schrieb Lars Madsen:

> The last time I tried to install MikTeX it did not install everything
> eventhough we asked it to (or were lead to beleave that it would install
> everything). Then afterwards we asked it to compile a memoir document
> and it had to go online to get memoir.

> So I've given up on MikTeX and does not recommend it to our users.

And will you give up TeXLive too if some day there is a temporary
error in a package or in the setup script and one installation
fails?

Btw: It is imho one of the strength of miktex that one doesn't have
to install everything at once but can get needed packages
on-the-fly. I never used the full installation.

--
Ulrike Fischer

Hardly surprising that it's not giving good results.

> (I tried many other options, nothing that really works well).

The only reliable method is to author in XML, and then convert to HTML
for the web and LaTeX for PDF. But that requires XML editing software
with an interface of a level of sophistication which does not yet exist.

> I just found out that Oracle wrote the new Java 7 SE specs in
> DocBook:

Right.

> And I think the reason they did this (my guess) is that it was easier
> to convert the final documentation to HTML (else Latex might have been
> a better choice, I would think).

No. They picked right. DocBook with MathML can do what you want, but as
you rightly say

> Problem for me with DocBook is
> that it is hard to use when you have lots of math

It's just that XML editor interfaces suck unless you're really familiar
with XML.

Digression: yes, it's my thesis topic, and yes, it's getting Real Close
Now :-)

> So, I hope the Latex community will pay more attention to this

I hope more people will consider that authoring in LaTeX is not the way
to go if you want multiple output types.

///Peter

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Mar 29, 2012, 5:46:08 PM3/29/12

to

On 03/27/2012 01:51 PM, Gabriel wrote:
>
>
> 1) Insufficient figure placement algorithm.
>

I suspect that this is connected with the notion of "page" and "page
spread." Many two-page spreads start with a recto, then verso-recto
pairs, then a verso. Placement could depend on where in a spread the
reference and the float happen to be. Single pages might have to have a
more draconian approach, but the nonfloat package might help.

>
> 2) Stagnant typographic quality.
>

Microtype and the features of LuaTeX appear to address much of that,
perhaps apart from river detection. But I have seen few rivers to date
using microtype. When dealing with Hebrew, I definitely would turn to
XeTeX. It just does it right, especially with cantillation.

I really think your question is user-dependent.

I do find that I use the TeX family differently than math/science folks.
I came to TeX via ConTeXt and plain. I bought a computer in Germany
using Win95 and Office because I did a lot of German-Engklish work then
in Fkt/Main. I also used it for starting my master thesis, which had
about 100 pages of translation at the time. That computer got old and,
being back in the US, I got a "newer" Win98 machine that did not at all
handle my German stuff.

Fast forward to getting a raw deal from a British firm producing a
Creative Suite knockoff. I said to heck with it, I am looking at Linux.
I tried Debian, Mandriva, and Fedora when Gnome 2 had barely emerged.
KDE was too bloated and the whole thing was still to beta. For example,
a scanner misfeed with SANE would crash the Linux kernel. Really.

So I spent a couple of years in BSD land and was happy, because it was
stable. Yet they are really interested in servers, apart from PC-BSD,
and the hardware support was weak.

So now I have this love-hate thing with Canonical, but I get the
experience I mostly want without having to become a mind-slave to Apple
or a meaningless peon in Microsoft land.

I went to LaTeX because of babel. I stayed with LaTeX because of
biblatex and the biblatex-chicago package. With microtype I can get
results near ID quality with about the same amount of work.

I have done scripting with ID. I have investigated Scribe's well-formed
document workflow. I have also looked at Anastasia, Classical Text
Editor and other tools. Many tools cost a lot, either in price or in
support. The TeX family fills a unique niche.

Even with ID, you have to fiddle with keep rules and other paragraph
options. Its indexing and cross-referencing abilities are not as
advanced as LaTeX, but it is getting there. Yet I can also export from
LibreOffice with writer2latex with about the same efficiency as using
scripts to import Word into ID. There are also web-centric options for
writer2latex. It seems that some decisions depend on matching workflow
to the needs of the project.

Part of the equation is tool chains and the whole "small is beautiful"
approach that one does not see as prominently in Win/Mac environments.

>
>
> 5) Aging of TeX:
>

Perhaps LuaTeX will help there. I seem to remember that an important
point of TeX was the ability to archive documents and recall them a
century later. Mind you, getting current Word to retrieve older
documents from the 90s without crashing is itself a challenge, so I
would not belittle this objective too much.

As I recall, someone once pointed out an issue of roundoff or inaccuracy
in dimensions that Knuth declined to fix because it would change the
look of documents, which could cause much more agita by forcing everyone
to look at thousands of documents to see if they still worked. The one
peccadillo did not warrant the bigger fix.

Perhaps there needs to be a consensus that a strict, trip-test branch
and TeX-alike branch may be in the future. But TeX is to many other
tools as BSD is to Linux. It Just Works, even when all the extras may
not be there, and that may be a big deal in order to keep a document
from crashing the typesetter before a big deadline.

>
> 6) Exessive diversification:
>

Again, one could say that of open source in general. Some projects
simply have a big enough following to survive. Some projects are sacred
cows to some folks "down at the commune." But the fact that a person can
come up with a neat solution of his or her own is a hallmark of open
source culture and should not be messed with.

Perhaps what might be needed is something like Zegenie Studios has with
its Linux distro picker. http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

In other words, allow people to traverse a decision tree that
dynamically populates a list of packages.

This could be implemented as a mandatory new file with each package,
e.g., package.nfo

<arch>x86</arch> # machine architecture

<os>linux</os> # operating system

<engine>latex</engine>
<engine>pdftex</engine>
<engine>xetex</engine> # typesetting engine
<req>etoolbox</req> # required packages on CTAN

Note that requires might go beyond a TeX distro, at which time the user
might be advised of this and directed to the package or module manual
install procedures.

<output>ps</output>
<output>pdf</output> # get the idea of whether to go via dvips, etc.

<keyword>graphics</keyword> # add a list of keywords

<unique>Allows X to workaround Y problem.</unique> # unique features

<desc> This is my package description. Yada, yada, yada.</desc>

<author>Jane Doe</author>

You get the idea. This need not replace texdoc[tk], but it could be a
way of helping people walk a tree of dependencies or requirements in
order to help them tailor their needs and experiences. Maybe that could
be a future component for ins/dtx files, etc.?

Nor am I sure that the whole thing boils down to forks. It takes one
thing to write a LaTeX package. It takes another to write a class, or a
ConTeXt module, or a format in plain.

I used plain to import data from the web and make a list of "zingers"
from The Hollywood Squares because I knew what I wanted to do and plain
allowed me to do that with a small amount of coding and a large amount
of consistent formatting.

XeTeX and LuaTeX do much to allow fontspec goodness and OTF/AAT.

Regarding IDEs, Gummi will produce some interesting "on the fly" results
but it is possible to get into a situation where the stale aux file
locks up the texing of the main file, In that case the IDE needs to know
how to break the deadlock.

Also, we are back to the idea of what is a page or a frame or a box,
where you would have to stroke the extant programs to dummy out a
theoretical page and start filling it. This might work in some cases,
whereas in others you might get something nonsensical or very different
from the final output until a sufficient amount of input was reached.

In short, one must bridge the gap between interactive and batch
processing. Perhaps LuaTeX could be that bridge, allowing fro bot a
batch mode and an interactive mode? Who knows? But that is a daunting
effort.

As to the young, either Word/Writer/Mellel/etc. will meet your needs, or
it will not. Scribus mostly does not meet my needs, while InDesign would
meet most of them. LaTeΧ is a good 80/20 solution and it is free.

People are self-publishing Word documents that look like typographic
garbage. Most consumers do not care, and many publishers don't either.

I do see the necessity to do eBook, MobiPocket, Kindle, etc. perhaps
more than the web, These need to be considered as targets, as should
perhaps the integration of multi-format graphics handling. But an
integrated web target ot XML target would male LaTeX more than just a
backend for paper, which is what a number of XML workflows assume. That
might also standardize package formats, command syntax, etc. and promote
LaTeX3.

Charles

Luis Rivera

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Mar 29, 2012, 5:46:57 PM3/29/12

to

On Tuesday, March 27, 2012 12:51:50 PM UTC-6, Gabriel wrote:
> With this little ranting about LaTeX & Co, I would just like to spark
> the discussion as to where Latex & Co should go.
> [...]

> In a nutshell, how do you convince someone that they should use LaTeX?

> (instead of Framemaker, InDesign, Word, etc.)
> Especially someone, whose documents do *not* contain math (or very
> little)?
> Yeah, right, there is the superior typographic quality of TeX's
> paragraph
> typesetting algorithm -- but read on ...

>
>
> 1) Insufficient figure placement algorithm.

> 2) Stagnant typographic quality.
> 4) TeX's native graphical capabilities are pitiful.
> 5) Aging of TeX:
> 6) Exessive diversification:
> 7) Fonts:
> 8) Umlauts.
> 9) "Standard" packages.
> 10) Acceptance among the young.
> 11) No decent "IDE".
>
> Summary:
>
> TeX, LaTeX et al. have come a long way.
> They are still quite powerful and versatile, and the user community
> and the
> developer community are very active.
> I wish, LaTeX will live and thrive for at least another 30 years,
> but I see no concerted major efforts to keep up with other
> document preparation tools.
>

From several answers on this thread, I collect that some of the issues the OP points out are already being dealt with in "modern" TeX implementations: either or both XeTeX/LuaTeX have

1. better international support via UTF-8,
2. some built-in graphics capabilities (via MetaPost or png/jpg),
3. better font support, via OpenType and OS/freetype,
4. microtype extensions, and
5. better, more interactive IDEs with better inverse search capabilities (TeXworks, for instance).

There are things that will not happen. If "the young" are used to point and click, they'll never catch La/TeX anyway: what they (and perhaps the OP) want is a better WordProcessor, which in addition to my points 1-5 may have the ability to give interactive results ("better IDEs with image anchors and point and click abilities"). TeX is a batch typesetter; LaTeX is a markup language built on top of TeX; neither is a text editors or word processor.

Perhaps I might add that the key problem with TeX is precisely that it is batch oriented, not interactive (it is not possible to compose two opposing pages at the same time); and the main problem with LaTeX is that it is a markup language too much tied to this particular typesetter.

I wonder whether it could be possible to develop a succesor markup language more on the footsteps of Texinfo: a single source code, with a few catcodes, that outputs different media (xml docbook, html, online documentation, online pdfs, printed documentation), and it's not that tightly woven with TeX. That would be terrific.

Luis.

Nasser M. Abbasi

unread,

Mar 29, 2012, 8:14:58 PM3/29/12

to

On 3/29/2012 3:21 PM, Peter Flynn wrote:
> On 28/03/12 21:22, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
>> my 1.5 cents on the subject:
>>
>> I love Latex, but it is really behind the times when it comes to
>> being 'web' friendly. I mean, exporting latex to html is
>> a really weak area for Latex.

>
> If you want web pages, why are you writing in LaTeX? It's the wrong tool.
>

Again (does one here have to say the things 10 times?) it is because
my documents are full of math. I can write complex math very
easily and quickly using a gui software such as Scientific word,
which then generates latex. There is no better tool for math documents
than Latex. But I still want to see it on HTML and not just as a
PDF file.

>
> I hope more people will consider that authoring in LaTeX is not the way
> to go if you want multiple output types.
>
> ///Peter

Really? I thought that was the main strength of Latex. Convert latex
to .dvi (device independent) and one can easily generate from dvi a
.ps, .pdf, bitmap, .svg. And using a tool like latex2html, can generate
.html from latex, much better than any other system I tried (word, etc...)

What other technology (open or closed) do you know that can do all
this multiple outputs and all from the same one plain text source
file?

--Nasser

Luis Rivera

unread,

Mar 29, 2012, 9:25:15 PM3/29/12

to

Texinfo (and textile, with pandoc).

Try it,

Luis.

JohnF

unread,

Mar 30, 2012, 4:40:20 AM3/30/12

to

Helmut Elbers <dva...@yahoo.de> wrote:
> Am 28.03.2012 07:38, schrieb JohnF:

>> Scott Pakin<scot...@pakin.org> wrote:
>>> On 03/27/2012 12:51 PM, Gabriel wrote:

>>>> In a nutshell, how do you convince someone
>>>> that they should use LaTeX?
>>>

>>> It's not easy. The only people I've ever managed to convince
>>> are those who were unhappy with their current system:
>>
>> Sure. "Convincing" is the wrong thing to be doing in the first
>> place. At most, demonstrate, and then let the person make up
>> their own mind. Many people are justifiably happy with Word, etc:
>> it works well enough for their purposes, they already know how
>> to use it, all their friends/co-workers use it, and (last but
>> not least) they have a life they'd like to live rather than
>> spending their little free time learning yet another arcane
>> application. Latex is absolutely the wrong thing for such
>> people, and that's most people. The small subset of people
>> for whom latex is the right thing, and who aren't already
>> using it, will quickly figure that out for themselves once
>> you give them a little demonstration. If "convincing" beyond
>> demonstration is also necessary, then that's most likely
>> just the wrong person for latex.
>
> Don't be so pessimistic!

Not being pessimistic; just proselytizing against proselytizing.
Too often, "convince" ~ proselytize. People get wedded to their
own favorite os/application/whatever, and then go out to convert
the world.

> I think the choice of the editor or frontend
> can make the beginning of using LaTeX easier. Give LyX a try! Klick
> here, klick there, and get much better results than in Word, OO etc.

Well, Sez you [American slang for "says" when pointing out an opinion
presented as a fact]. People like whatever they like for whatever
reason they like it. People who write enough math to like LaTeX
for that reason alone are probably already aware of it. Ditto for
non-math people who admire its "beautiful typography" aspects.
Personally, I agree LaTeX is way better than Word, etc. But as the OP
complained, and Peter Flynn elaborated, some to-be-invented markup that's
easily writable by humans (using whatever editor they like), and that's
exportable to all within-reason-imaginable formats, preserving all
(or most of) the capabilities of each, might be even nicer.
And I'm sure such a thing will eventually come to pass. A hundred
years from now nobody's going to be using Windows or Linux/Unix, and
nobody's going to be using Word or LaTeX. These are all transient
things just waiting for the next better idea to come along. But when
it does come along, a cadre of old-school diehards will undoubtedly
continue proselytizing the old-school stuff for maybe 20 more years.
That's what always happens, and the solution is equally well-known --
actuarial, i.e., the old-school diehards eventually just die themselves.
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: j...@f.com where j=john and f=forkosh )

Martin Heller

unread,

Mar 30, 2012, 4:42:29 AM3/30/12

to

Nasser M. Abbasi wrote, on 30-03-2012 02:14:
> What other technology (open or closed) do you know that can do all
> this multiple outputs and all from the same one plain text source
> file?

Give Pandoc a try <http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/>

You can even go from TeX math to html. See
<http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/demos.html> number 17 for examples.

JohnF

unread,

Mar 30, 2012, 5:02:13 AM3/30/12

to

Robin Fairbairns <rf...@cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> Lee Rudolph <lrud...@panix.com> writes:
>> "Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> writes:
>>
>>>I looked at MathJax before
>>>but it does not fit with my setup I have with working with SW.
>>
>> How about John Forkosh's stuff (which I've forgotten the name
>> of)?
>
> mathtex, which has superseded the earlier mimetex.
> both are available from ctan.

Yeah, I owe you an update (hate that new form-driven system;
preferred the old email-and-ftp system -- maybe we can start
a discussion about that, too:).

> however, they produce nothing better than you can achieve by using the
> preview package, which is the way i tend to go. they're good for
> embedding in a web server.

Yeah, that's their purpose. Obviously mathtex "produces nothing better
than" preview (or just about anything else) -- they both (all) use
latex as the underlying rendering engine. Just different "front ends",
so to speak. mathtex is very convenient for writing one-(or few-)line
plugins for stuff like wordpress, phpbb, mediawiki, etc, where you
just change, say, [tex]x^2+y^2[/tex] to <img src="mathtex.cgi?x^2+y^2">.

> i tend not to serve mathematics from my web server(s)

> there ain't no-one wants to read mathematics written by me,

Your story has touched my heart. Never before have I met anyone
with troubles such as yours. Please accept this post as a token
of my sincerest sympathy.

Robin Fairbairns

unread,

Mar 30, 2012, 7:40:57 AM3/30/12

to

Hendrik van Hees <he...@fias.uni-frankfurt.de> writes:

> On 29/03/12 19:34, Robert Heller wrote:
>
>> Linux distros have their own package management systems. What probably
>> needs to be done is to set up some mechcanism that makes it possible to
>> bundle all of the packages on ctan into indivual .deb (Debian flavored)
>> and/or .rpm (RedHat flavored) packages that can then be stashed into
>> third-party repositories. Then Linux uses can then do 'yum update' or
>> 'apt-get update' (or yum install or apt-get install).
>
> The trouble is that my distro (openSuSE 12.1) doesn't provide the
> LaTeX packages I need. That's why I install the most uptodate texlive
> by hand. I call

almost no linux distro does. the only exception i know of is the very
latest fedora, though even that may not have hit the streets yet; fedora
has been through an exhaustive licence re-check of the whole of tl --
despite our (and the tl team's) best efforts at checking in the first
place.

Robin Fairbairns

unread,

Mar 30, 2012, 7:46:57 AM3/30/12

to

"Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> writes:

> On 3/29/2012 3:21 PM, Peter Flynn wrote:
>> On 28/03/12 21:22, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
>>> my 1.5 cents on the subject:
>>>
>>> I love Latex, but it is really behind the times when it comes to
>>> being 'web' friendly. I mean, exporting latex to html is
>>> a really weak area for Latex.
>
>>
>> If you want web pages, why are you writing in LaTeX? It's the wrong tool.
>>
>
> Again (does one here have to say the things 10 times?) it is because
> my documents are full of math. I can write complex math very
> easily and quickly using a gui software such as Scientific word,
> which then generates latex. There is no better tool for math documents
> than Latex. But I still want to see it on HTML and not just as a
> PDF file.
>
>> I hope more people will consider that authoring in LaTeX is not the way
>> to go if you want multiple output types.
>

> Really? I thought that was the main strength of Latex. Convert latex
> to .dvi (device independent) and one can easily generate from dvi a
> .ps, .pdf, bitmap, .svg. And using a tool like latex2html, can generate
> .html from latex, much better than any other system I tried (word, etc...)
>
> What other technology (open or closed) do you know that can do all
> this multiple outputs and all from the same one plain text source
> file?

does peter have to say things 10 times in each thread?

fwiw, i've also piped up with comments about sciword in this thread. if
its "latex" output doesn't work with standard latex installs, why might
it work with latex2html (or anything similarly clunky)?

aiui, the only html generator with a reasonable chance of producing
decent output for a wide range of documents is tex4ht, and even that
doesn't do mathml output.

Robin Fairbairns

unread,

Mar 30, 2012, 7:56:32 AM3/30/12

to

Peter Flynn <pe...@silmaril.ie> writes:

> On 29/03/12 14:35, Robin Fairbairns wrote:
>> Timothy Murphy <gayl...@alice.it> writes:
>>
>>> I feel somewhat guilty saying this,
>>> as I regard Robin Fairbairns and his cohort
>>> as among the saints of LaTeX,
>>> probably in the ninth sphere (The Primum Mobile: The Angels)
>>> together with Donald Knuth.
>>
>> oh dear.
>>
>>> But I do wish I could just say "tum update" as I say "yum update",
>>> and all my LaTeX packages would be brought up to date automagically.
>>> And I find the catalogue slightly difficult to navigate,
>>> though again I greatly admire the work that has gone into it.
>>
>> there are update mechanisms built-in to the distributions (both tex live
>> and miktex). unfortunately, linux distributions tend to suppress
>> those -- something i can invent any number of conspiracy-style theories
>> about, but it's probably just not possible.
>

> Actually, the zip files from CTAN package directories would be good.
> Many (most, possibly) are now in a form where only very little moving
> around is needed to install them for the end user. If it was possible
> for them to arrange their structure so that it replicated the location
> wrt texmf of all their contents, then they could just be unzipped into
> the user's personal TeX folder e basta.

you mean, like the .tds.zip files on ctan? (admittedly, there are only
430 of those vs. 1403 directories in macros/latex/contrib.)

> On the subject of which, is it possible to recognise that perhaps 99% of
> users are on personal machines nowadays, not shared Unix boxes? And
> settle, in conjunction with the distro authors, on one single place for
> the infamous "places where TeX will find them" location? Instead of
> giving users a dozen possible solutions? I have been working with users
> on the following basis, which appears to work OK:
>
> Unix, GNU/Linux: ~/texmf
> Apple Mac OS X: ~/Library/texmf
> Windows <2007: C:\texmf
> Windows =>2007: Computer\Users\yourname\texmf
>
> Yes, I know MiKTeX will need to add this to the config and run an FNDB
> update, but the other locations seem to work without.

unread,

Mar 30, 2012, 4:21:33 PM3/30/12

to

On 30/03/12 01:14, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
> On 3/29/2012 3:21 PM, Peter Flynn wrote:
>> If you want web pages, why are you writing in LaTeX? It's the wrong tool.
>
> Again (does one here have to say the things 10 times?) it is because
> my documents are full of math. I can write complex math very
> easily and quickly using a gui software such as Scientific word,

Aha. Thanks. So it's the speed you work at, using a specific interface.

> which then generates latex.

Right. So you are not hand-writing LaTeX math source. If there was
another tool, with a GUI math interface as good as SciWord, in which you
could write your math just as fast and accurately as with SciWord, would
you be prepared to try it? And if it produced MathML, which it
translated to LaTeX for you?

> There is no better tool for math documents than Latex.

Generally accepted.

> But I still want to see it on HTML and not just as a PDF file.

Same here (except for the math, which I don't use). Which is why I don't
author in LaTeX: I author in XML and transform it to LaTeX when I want a
PDF, and to HTML when I want a web page.

It's the math which is the problem here. LyX's math interface looks good
to me as a non-mathematician. I know SciWord's LaTeX export is ghastly
to edit, and full of the most horrendous kludges (I had to produce a
book from such a file once, and ended up having to hand-edit the math
into an editable form, which reduced the size of the source document by
over 50%). Arbortext's EPIC math editor is beautiful, but expensive and
needs some training.

>> I hope more people will consider that authoring in LaTeX is not the way
>> to go if you want multiple output types.
>

> Really? I thought that was the main strength of Latex. Convert latex
> to .dvi (device independent) and one can easily generate from dvi a
> .ps, .pdf, bitmap, .svg.

That's not what I meant at all: those are just image formats. I meant
translate your source file into PDF, HTML, XML (including OOXML and ODF,
even SGML if you really wanted), formatted plaintext, Wiki markups,
Braille, audio, etc.

> What other technology (open or closed) do you know that can do all
> this multiple outputs and all from the same one plain text source
> file?

XML.

///Peter

Peter Flynn

unread,

Mar 30, 2012, 4:36:13 PM3/30/12

to

On 30/03/12 19:45, Manuel Collado wrote:
> El 29/03/2012 22:21, Peter Flynn escribió:
>> On 28/03/12 21:22, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
>>> my 1.5 cents on the subject:
>>>
>>> I love Latex, but it is really behind the times when it comes to
>>> being 'web' friendly. I mean, exporting latex to html is
>>> a really weak area for Latex.
>>
>> If you want web pages, why are you writing in LaTeX? It's the wrong tool.
>>
>> ...
>> The only reliable method is to author in XML, and then convert to HTML
>> for the web and LaTeX for PDF. But that requires XML editing software
>> with an interface of a level of sophistication which does not yet exist.
>
> Are you sure? Please have a look a XXE:

Yes I'm sure :-) And XXE is very nice, but you simply can't sit someone
down at it and expect them to create a document without training. It
requires a foreknowledge of XML which the ordinary writer does not have,
and doesn't want to acquire.

> XXE supports editing math formulas embedded in DocBook and XHTML documents.
> (I'm just a satisfied XXE user)

Me too, but I've been using XML for a long time.

///Peter

Donald Arseneau

unread,

Mar 30, 2012, 7:48:27 PM3/30/12

to

"Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> writes:

> my documents are full of math. I can write complex math very
> easily and quickly using a gui software such as Scientific word,
> which then generates latex. There is no better tool for math documents
> than Latex. But I still want to see it on HTML and not just as a
> PDF file.

I've liked TtM which worked well for me after a small patch. Finally
many browsers do support mathml.

Donald Arseneau as...@triumf.ca

JohnF

unread,

Mar 31, 2012, 2:27:06 AM3/31/12

to

Robin Fairbairns <rf...@cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> JohnF <jo...@please.see.sig.for.email.com> writes:
>> Robin Fairbairns <rf...@cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>> mathtex, which has superseded the earlier mimetex.
>>> both are available from ctan.
>>
>> Yeah, I owe you an update (hate that new form-driven system;
>> preferred the old email-and-ftp system -- maybe we can start
>> a discussion about that, too:).
>
> mail me off-line.

Not necessary. I realize the form system is lots easier
for the maintainers than individually reading a whole bunch
of emails and trying to figure out what needs to be done
in each case. I'll be happy to oblige (though not quite as
happy as had I won that $500-million lottery last night).

Robin Fairbairns

unread,

Mar 31, 2012, 3:11:35 AM3/31/12

to

Peter Flynn <pe...@silmaril.ie> writes:

> On 30/03/12 12:56, Robin Fairbairns wrote:
>> Peter Flynn <pe...@silmaril.ie> writes:
>>> Actually, the zip files from CTAN package directories would be good.
>>> Many (most, possibly) are now in a form where only very little moving
>>> around is needed to install them for the end user. If it was possible
>>> for them to arrange their structure so that it replicated the location
>>> wrt texmf of all their contents, then they could just be unzipped into
>>> the user's personal TeX folder e basta.
>>
>> you mean, like the .tds.zip files on ctan? (admittedly, there are only
>> 430 of those vs. 1403 directories in macros/latex/contrib.)
>
> Are those the ones behind the links which say "You can get the contents
> of this directory bundled as a zip file."? Because they don't end in
> .tds.zip, just .zip. I'm clearly missing something here.

no. what are you looking at? -- i tend to look at the catalogue in
help/Catalogue/entries, on ctan (largely because i maintain it, and can
therefore make it change quickly if i spot something wrong). the
catalogue does have a link for an "install file" if one exists

> [ of locations of the standard personal texmf tree ]

>> the tex faq tries to list that lot. i'll review to make sure i have
>> them all right.
>
> Thank you :-)

my beloved took me out to the cinema to stop me "sitting at home in
front of the computer all evening", for once. back from the cinema,
i've made an annotation to check the things: today's release of the faq
has _not_ been treated in this way. (i thought of an entirely different
problem in the middle of laughing at the film.)

so far, therefore, the job has got no further than making a note to
remind me.

>> (incidentally, ~/texmf on a linux machine is a snare and a delusion if
>> your home directory is served from a remote filestore -- in that case,
>> the oft-repeated mantra that you don't need texhash for that directory
>> is just plain wrong.)
>
> Quite, but I suspect the the number of people in that position is
> vanishingly small compared with the number who have a standalone machine.
>
>> we encourage people to provide a .tds.zip file. some even do.
>
> I certainly don't, which I will rectify asap.
>
>>> Multiuser systems are a separate and much smaller population.
>>
>> indeed. but their admins need advice too...
>
> Yes, there must be hundreds if not thousands run by people who have no
> idea what TeX is except that some of their users demand it. Their
> installations are often a decade or so out of date, having been
> installed once and never touched since. Some TLC is warranted there.

but are such people going to read something by the likes of you or i?

Peter Flynn

unread,

Mar 31, 2012, 11:05:31 AM3/31/12

to

On 31/03/12 08:11, Robin Fairbairns wrote:
> Peter Flynn <pe...@silmaril.ie> writes:
>> On 30/03/12 12:56, Robin Fairbairns wrote:

[...]

>>> you mean, like the .tds.zip files on ctan? (admittedly, there
>>> are only 430 of those vs. 1403 directories in
>>> macros/latex/contrib.)
>>
>> Are those the ones behind the links which say "You can get the
>> contents of this directory bundled as a zip file."? Because they
>> don't end in .tds.zip, just .zip. I'm clearly missing something
>> here.
>
> no. what are you looking at?

I use ctan.org/pkg/<packagename> for lookup, and
ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/<whatever> for the files. Those latter
pages all include that "You can get the contents of this directory
bundled as a zip file" link.

> i tend to look at the catalogue in help/Catalogue/entries, on ctan
> (largely because i maintain it, and can therefore make it change
> quickly if i spot something wrong). the catalogue does have a link
> for an "install file" if one exists

Can you point me at an example? I just checked a dozen or so pages there
and couldn't find one with an "install file" link.

> my beloved took me out to the cinema to stop me "sitting at home in
> front of the computer all evening", for once.

How very sensible.

> back from the cinema, i've made an annotation to check the things:
> today's release of the faq has _not_ been treated in this way. (i
> thought of an entirely different problem in the middle of laughing at
> the film.)

Even better: laughter is good.

> so far, therefore, the job has got no further than making a note to
> remind me.

No urgency.

>>> indeed. but their admins need advice too...
>>
>> Yes, there must be hundreds if not thousands run by people who have
>> no idea what TeX is except that some of their users demand it.
>> Their installations are often a decade or so out of date, having
>> been installed once and never touched since. Some TLC is warranted
>> there.
>
> but are such people going to read something by the likes of you or
> i?

Probably not, unless they come across it. It would need to be very short
and simple, virtually foolproof, and contains some humour...

///Peter

Nicola Talbot

unread,

Mar 31, 2012, 11:53:14 AM3/31/12

to

>>> Are those the ones behind the links which say "You can get the
>>> contents of this directory bundled as a zip file."? Because they
>>> don't end in .tds.zip, just .zip. I'm clearly missing something
>>> here.
>>
>> no. what are you looking at?
>
> I use ctan.org/pkg/<packagename> for lookup, and
> ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/<whatever> for the files. Those latter
> pages all include that "You can get the contents of this directory
> bundled as a zip file" link.

I've never been able to find a .tds.zip link from
ctan.org/pkg/<packagename> even when I know there is a TDS version
available, but I usually go to www.tex.ac.uk as it's closer (for me),
and that has a "Download TDS" option that pops up if you move your mouse
over the "Distributions" link in the required catalogue entry, but you
can also use the http://mirror.ctan.org/install/ path. For example, to
fetch the glossaries TDS, you just fetch:

http://mirror.ctan.org/install/macros/latex/contrib/glossaries.tds.zip

instead of:

http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/glossaries.zip

Regards
Nicola Talbot
--
Home: http://theoval.cmp.uea.ac.uk/~nlct/
LaTeX Related Information: http://theoval.cmp.uea.ac.uk/~nlct/latex/
Creating a LaTeX Minimal Example:
http://theoval.cmp.uea.ac.uk/~nlct/latex/minexample/

Peter Flynn

unread,

Mar 31, 2012, 6:08:45 PM3/31/12

to

On 31/03/12 16:53, Nicola Talbot wrote:
>>>> Are those the ones behind the links which say "You can get the
>>>> contents of this directory bundled as a zip file."? Because they
>>>> don't end in .tds.zip, just .zip. I'm clearly missing something
>>>> here.
>>>
>>> no. what are you looking at?
>>
>> I use ctan.org/pkg/<packagename> for lookup, and
>> ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/<whatever> for the files. Those latter
>> pages all include that "You can get the contents of this directory
>> bundled as a zip file" link.
>
> I've never been able to find a .tds.zip link from
> ctan.org/pkg/<packagename> even when I know there is a TDS version
> available, but I usually go to www.tex.ac.uk as it's closer (for me),
> and that has a "Download TDS" option that pops up if you move your mouse
> over the "Distributions" link in the required catalogue entry, but you
> can also use the http://mirror.ctan.org/install/ path. For example, to
> fetch the glossaries TDS, you just fetch:
>
> http://mirror.ctan.org/install/macros/latex/contrib/glossaries.tds.zip
>
> instead of:
>
> http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/glossaries.zip

Perfect, thanks.

///Peter

Guenter Milde

unread,

Apr 2, 2012, 7:21:48 AM4/2/12

to

Gabriel

unread,

Apr 4, 2012, 1:35:31 PM4/4/12

to

Thanks a lot for your summary.

> From several answers on this thread, I collect that some of the issues the OP points out are already being dealt with in "modern" TeX implementations: either or both XeTeX/LuaTeX have
>
> 1. better international support via UTF-8,
> 2. some built-in graphics capabilities (via MetaPost or png/jpg),
> 3. better font support, via OpenType and OS/freetype,
> 4. microtype extensions, and
> 5. better, more interactive IDEs with better inverse search capabilities (TeXworks, for instance).

All of this sounds good.

But do we really need 2 different TeX's? (xetex & luatex)
Wouldn't it be better to join the efforts?

> There are things that will not happen. If "the young" are used to point and click, they'll never catch La/TeX anyway: what they (and perhaps the OP) want is a better WordProcessor,

No, I don't think I want a "WordProcessor"; I want all of the above,
working out of the box, *and* a better IDE that sports *some* point-
and-click features.

> which in addition to my points 1-5 may have the ability to give interactive results ("better IDEs with image anchors and point and click abilities"). TeX is a batch typesetter; LaTeX is a markup language built on top of TeX; neither is a text editors or word processor.

Which is perfectly fine.
But in the 21st century, it is hard to see why an IDE does not include
a simple drawing editor, or simple bitmap image editor capabilities
(such as crop, rotate, and brightness/contrast changes).

In addition, it would be not too difficult for an IDE to provide a
"near-live" update of the preview window (built-in PDF viewer). (I
know that it is much more difficult for the Latex IDE than for a
WordProcessor, but still quite possible.)

Best regards,
Gabriel.

Oliver Corff

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Apr 4, 2012, 4:50:45 PM4/4/12

to

Gabriel <snoop...@googlemail.com> wrote:
: Thanks a lot for your summary.

: In addition, it would be not too difficult for an IDE to provide a

: "near-live" update of the preview window (built-in PDF viewer). (I
: know that it is much more difficult for the Latex IDE than for a
: WordProcessor, but still quite possible.)

Gabriel,

I get the impression that you wonder about things related to TeX without
actually querying what is available at CTAN. There is a wonderful
package named most appropriately "preview" which does what you desire.

And for those who are not faint at heart:
- use your favourite PDF viewer to display the PDF output of your
compile process;
- have it run in the background;
- automagically save your edited file every n seconds (set n to be
commensurable with the combined speeds of your work and your computer)
- have a simple infinite loop with a sleep command recompile your source
every n seconds, and

v o i l a

You get near real-time display of your changes etc.

Just my two cents,
Oliver.
--
Dr. Oliver Corff e-mail: co...@zedat.fu-berlin.de

Gabriel

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Apr 4, 2012, 5:06:30 PM4/4/12

to

> Incidentally, I was reading the OP's posting again,
> and found all his 10 reasons why LaTeX is not - according to him -

> doing well, [...]

> absurdly misplaced.
>
> Primo, LaTeX is doing pretty well, as evidenced by the constant stream
> of questions and answers to this newsgroup.

Well, I guess you have different criteria about exactly what it means
"to do well".

> A student who writes his thesis in LaTeX
> is almost certainly hooked for life.

Agreed - provided he can stay in academia.
Otherwise: there is no way he can remain using Latex, except in his
private writings.

Many of the arguments I have seen in response to my post seem to miss
my point - maybe, I failed to make myself clear.

Think of the landscape of document preparation systems in 50 years'
time.

How many people using Latex have looked at http://math.stackexchange.com/
?

People will expect that kind of live update. And more.
I believe, most computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians, etc.,
will be fine with typing some kind of markup language, such as Latex,
in 50 years' time.
But they will not be fine with messing with this conglomeration of TeX
(xetex, luatex), Latex, IDE, separate drawing editor, separate image
editor, separate bibliography tool, separate index generation tool,
etc.
They won't care if this conglomeration is working behind the scenes,
but they will expect one single package that "just works" out of the
box.
And if Latex won't deliver that, then some other system probably will.

With my post, I just wanted to try to make people think about the long-
term future (i.e., 10+ years) of Latex et al.

Best regards,
Gabriel.

Oliver Corff

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Apr 4, 2012, 5:08:51 PM4/4/12

As you type the Latex source in the text box, you can see the preview
underneath the text box.

Gabriel

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Apr 4, 2012, 7:59:29 PM4/4/12

to

> And for those who are not faint at heart:
> - use your favourite PDF viewer to display the PDF output of your
> compile process;
> - have it run in the background;
> - automagically save your edited file every n seconds (set n to be
> commensurable with the combined speeds of your work and your computer)
> - have a simple infinite loop with a sleep command recompile your source
> every n seconds, and
>
> v o i l a
>
> You get near real-time display of your changes etc.

Yes, I've done that many years ago when I still used vi[m] to write my
Latex source.
But it misses my point.

Ulrike Fischer

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Apr 5, 2012, 3:16:52 AM4/5/12

to

I fail to see the connection to my remark.

--
Ulrike Fischer

Robin Fairbairns

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Apr 5, 2012, 5:26:08 AM4/5/12

to

Gabriel <snoop...@googlemail.com> writes:

> [some not credited] said:
>
>> With all respect, no. You can do a keyword search at CTAN which will
>> come up with a very good selection of things to pick from in a
>> reasonable time and presentation format.
>
> Well, I think the "average" user should not even have to know about
> CTAN.

you're setting your "average" pretty high, given that even the uk faq is
essentially part of ctan.

> The functionality you describe should be part of an IDE or, at least,
> part of some kind of TeX installation manager.

> regarding package.zip as an exact analogy to package.rpm.

it isn't, really. rpms contain other vital information, like where to
put the files, what the prerequisites are, what to do before installing
and what to do after installing. package.zip only contains the files,
quite likely not even in an installable form.

> My complaint, if it can be called that, is that the path
> from package name to zip file could be more direct,
> and often requires several minutes to navigate.

how are getting from one to the other? to get to the file, i use the
ctan catalogue search, which will give me a catalogue page, which has
the .zip file as one of its links. (if a .zip exists.)

this is all a bit silly, since the archive is on my lan here at work,
but it does mean i know how it works for other people who don't spend
their time idly wandering around the archive, when stuck for an idea in
"real" work.

zappathustra

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Apr 5, 2012, 11:05:02 AM4/5/12

to

Gabriel <snoop...@googlemail.com> a écrit:

>
> Following up on some of the suggestions some people have made.
>
> 1. XeTeX & LuaTeX:
> With regards to Unicode and font handling, Xetex seems definitely like
> the right step in the right direction.
> LuaTeX is an excellent effort to extend TeX's capabilities.

LuaTeX is much more than an extension. As far as I can tell (I don't
know much else, admittedly), it's the best typesetting engine ever
produced.

> I hope, the developers will be able to sustain their efforts in the
> long term, and, possibly, join efforts, so that we end users will be
> able to use that great stuff some day.
>
> 2. fontenc:
> I have just glanced over the first 7 pages of the fontenc package ...
> it seems like it has so many exceptions that it is not usable for
> cross-platform document writing.

I don't use fontspec (nor LaTeX), so I can't tell in detail, but it
seems to me that fontspec supports both XeTeX and LuaTeX, which are
quite different engines, so the manual may look like a collection of
special cases. But you have to understand that with XeTeX and LuaTeX
the TeX world is stirring quite a lot, and things haven't settled yet;
the picture will be clearer, hopefully, when LuaTeX is definitely
integrated as the default TeX engine, at least in TeXLive.

> 3. Latex3:
> IIRC, the Latex3 project has been around for a long time.
> (I remember that I bought the Latex Companion specifically to support
> the Latex3 project, because I read somewhere that the revenue of the
> sales would be spent to support that project.)
> Again, I see a fragmentation of efforts. Or does LATEX3 take advantage
> of the new features in LuaTeX?

It doesn't, since the LaTeX3 team wants it compatible with other engines.
But it seems to me that you have implicitly equated TeX in general with
LaTeX in particular. If you want an extremely powerful and centralized
system, look at ConTeXt (which is based on LuaTeX).

> 4. The long-term future:
> A number of wonderful development efforts are under way.
> But I don't know if the man power behind the necessary modernization
> efforts at the core (e.g., LuaTeX) is large enough to make progress
> fast enough.

Perhaps you should take into account what is already done. When used
fully, LuaTeX, although still in progress, is a totally different world,
whose power hasn't been fully mastered yet, except perhaps in ConTeXt.

> (Again, I don't mean to belittle the efforts of the developers, on the
> contrary - but each developer can make only so many progress in their
> spare time.)
>
> Overall, I don't see my vision ("great Latex user experience", as in
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience) become a reality for the
> next 10 years.

I haven't followed the whole conversation, so I might be saying something
that has been already said, or totally irrelevant, but nonetheless: it
seems to me that you ignore the fact that TeX is above all a typesetting
system; that typography is a complex activity and thus the software is
inherently complex too, all the more as TeX (unlike e.g. InDesign) gives
you control of the tiniest aspect of typesetting, which is all the more
true with LuaTeX (as you might have guessed, I'm a LuaTeX fanatic).
``Simple'' things are nice as far as they go; but often they don't go
very far.

As for the proliferation of softwares, from TeX engines to editors (I
think you deplored that too), you just can't prevent people from
developping their own stuff in free software. That's exactly what's
happening here.

Best,
Paul