>spend 6 hours writing a report
>only 30 minutes was spent on the actual report
Does anyone else have a love-hate relationship with LaTeX?
LaTeX is a well engineered product. Perhaps too well engineered. Over engineered?
LaTeX is a really great tool for large reports or an academic career. Once you have it set up it does a lot of work for you. Problem is that you need to set it up. For small projects LaTeX's overhead can be a deal killer.
word is better
And now that you know Latex, your next report will be way faster!
Pro tip: write the plain text first, with one file per section. The only markup you should have at this point is minimal stuff like \begin{section} so it will be easy to find your way around the PDF.
If you don't worry about stupid formatting, you can just get down to work.
You should also consider checking your text in to version control, so that you'll have backups and can easily go back to a previous version if you fuck something up.
>>44350419
just use rtf for small shit then
>>44350503
>word
>>44350503
pls put more effort in your shitposting
>>44350419
I only use LaTeX for shit I actually intend to copy more than once like a Resume, it looks really nice but I've only really found it useful for documents that Word can't format effectively.
I don't really get people on /g/ who shitpost about it being even a halfway decent tool for everyday work usually done with WYSIWYG word processors.
>>44350419
LyX is the solution.
It's not as pretty as rendered LaTeX, which is a bit annoying, but you get used to it.
LyX can export pretty standard LaTeX. For my doctoral dissertation, I used a script to extract LaTeX from 3 LyX docs and combine them into the final dissertation, which used a custom template.
>>44350419
>not using emacs or vim with appropriate plugins
That's called "asking for it".
>>44350419
I love latex but it def has some shortcomings. maybe I lack skills but all my work is displayed on PDF, now if someone asks you for a copy of only page x... good luck. you will need to recode it, copy paste... blah. latex can be a pain... but I couldn't live without it
>>44350419
I'm pretty new to LaTeX what's the advantage of learning LaTeX in terms of documentation over Word and/or other Word-processing programs
Math student here, I legit had no idea people used latex for anything but math. Seems like too much work to me.
>>44351087
Fucking this, writhing my thesis with this bad boy atm, getting the hang of it, its great
>>44351193
how do i use a pdf editor?
troff (nroff, ditroff, whatever you want) is better.
>>44350419
Proof that LaTeX is a timesink for hipsters who tip their fedora into the friendzone instead of doing real work.
>>443513
>be me
>be a mechanical engineering student
beats the shit out of word for lab reports
>>44351306
It's fairly common, if not "The Standard", in chemistry and physics as well. At least the university I attend, being chemistry myself.
Once you're used to it, it's a lot easier to make and manage than Word. Seriously, I'll never ever make a +50 pages document with tables, figures, equations and references all over the place. LaTeX is a god-send for that. Also, I can place my documents in a private bitbucket Git repo for version control. Pretty handy.
>>44350419
I don't spend much time on formatting. Thus latex is good for me.
I mostly use the same templates and just focus on the text.
I do hate the inconsistency within latex.
It could be a lot easier if someone just took the time to rewrite a lot of packages.
>>44351335
liberal arts faggot detected
>>44351193psselect -p2
>>44351335
>real work
You mean like digging ditches?
Also, people, seriously, try using vim or emacs with the latex plugins. It can cut your keystrokes by 2/3.
>>44351193
open pdf
print -> current page -> to pdf
how hard is that?
.TL
A Treatise on the Faggotry of OP
.AU
Anonymous
.AB
In this article we study how much of a faggot OP is.
.AE
.PP
OP is a faggot.
>>44350419
I am writing my phd thesis in LaTeX and I love it.
>>44351367
What's your opinion on neatroff?
Also, do you have any troff cv templates to share? Thanks.
>>44351474.SH
Troff is fucking awesome!
.LP
I like using Troff because its series-of-filters model
integrates well with Unix and can be updated
sanely with a makefile.
.
.LP
Pic and eqn are pretty nice.
Unfortunately, non-GNU pic lacks some important features.
Nonetheless, it was easy to integrate an Awk preprocessor
to draw graphs into my pipeline!
>>44351542
> neatroff
I don't know what that is.
I mostly use Groff. I've tried Plan 9 troff, but it's really easy to fall into GNUisms.
> troff CV templates
give me a minute, I'll extract some of my macros.
>>44351260
- it renders better, don't have to worry about typesetting after creating a fitting template for you.
- beautiful equations
- plain text, so you can version control it
>>44351563
http://litcave.rudi.ir/neatroff.pdf
http://repo.or.cz/w/neatroff.git/tree
>>44351574
The name is appropriate, because that sounds pretty neat!
If I felt insane enough, I think it would be hilarious to implement troff in tex.
>>44351563
Here's what I use for the outline.
I'm including .i rather than .ms so that my makefile can run them through tbl.
This is probably overengineered..nr HM 0i \" Suppress header space.
.TL
.LG
.LG
Ann Onymous
.nr HM 1i \" Restore header for following pages.
.as LF Available online: \fChttp://example.com/cv/\fP
.as RF Last updated on 2014\-09\-23.
.
.nr GROWPS 2
.nr PSINCR 2p
.
.de SOSEC
.SH 1
\\$1
.so \\$2
..
.
.DS R
.\" Telephone:
+1(555)\-555\-5555
4096 Kilobyte Drive
Vancouver, B.C.
V7N 0B3
. CW [email protected]
.DE
.
.LP
.SOSEC "Education" education.i
.
.SOSEC "Computing Overview and Toolchain" overview.i
.
.SOSEC "Projects" projects.i
.
.KS
.SOSEC "Experience" experience.i
.KE
.
.KS
.SH 1
Interests
.LP
I enjoy road and cross-country bicycling, nordic and alpine ski\(:ing,
sailing, and playing keyboard and violin.
.KE
.SH 1
Languages
.LP
I speak fluent English, et je peux me faire comprendre en
Fran\(,cais.
>>44351630
Thanks, troff looks pretty nice.
>>44351636
Yeah, I like it. Some formatting does get hard though..\" education.ms
.LP
Some relevant courses:
.TS
;
l l lfI.
400-level Computational Geometry ongoing
400-level Linear Programming ongoing
400-level Concurrency B+
300-level Programming Languages A+
300-level Operating Systems A
.TE
Here I used a table to present a list of categories, and wrote a small macro to format the items nicely:.\" overview.ms
.de FRAMEWORK
\\$1 (\fI\\$2\fR)\\$3
..
.LP
.TS
;
lt lxt.
Programming languages: C, JavaScript, Unix shell, AWK, C++
.
Frameworks and libraries: T{
.FRAMEWORK lib9p C ,
.FRAMEWORK "HTML5 Canvas" Javascript ,
.FRAMEWORK SQLite C
T}
.
.TE
The FRAMEWORK macro prints its second argument italicised in parentheses.
>>44351689
Here's a fancier macro, which prints a bold title followed by fixed-width/typewriter URL at a constant tab stop, used to line up the headers of several projects so they look pretty.
I had to read the man page pretty thoroughly to figure out how to write this one, and it chokes up the troff-to-html convertors I've tried.
Generally, the html convertors seem to understand -ms macros but not much of troff itself..\" projects.ms
.de project
.LP
.LP
\fB\\$1\fP
\h'0.75i-\\n(.ku'
<\fC\\$2\fP>
.LP
..
.
.LP
.project raytracer http://example.com/raytracer/
Acetray is a raytracer written for a 300-level graphics class
etc etc.
>>44351574
Wow, reading that guy's homepage he's pretty impressive.
>>44351570
I see, so what's a good latex generator for windows besides using cygwin?
>>44351973
I think MikTeX has been the standard on Windows, but is being overtaken by TeXlive.
I'm pretty sure both of those run on native Windows with no Cygwin needed.
You can use whatever text editor you want. Emacs and Vi have Windows ports, and there are all sorts of Windows-native editors of varying quality.
Working with text is just nicer on Unix though.
>>44351973
miktex is fine and it has a great package manager for windows.
>>44351988
>>44352015
Thanks, download it right now.
>spent 3 hours figuring out how to make these bad boys
>>44350419
oh god I know that feeling
it gets a bit easier once you build up some templates/macros for common things
Why can't someone code a user interface for this thing? No one has time for this
How do I turn vim into the ultimate latex editor? Using texmaker atm
>>44352278
You use acme instead.
>>44352172
That's a beauty.
http://www.latextemplates.com/template/plasmati-graduate-cv
aleplasmati.comuv.com/?p=10I
this is what I use for my CV in latex.
>>44352205
> no one has time for this
But using plain text in a real text editor is way more efficient than dicking around with some WYSIWYG abomination.
You can pipe plain text through AWK and the standard Unix text-processing tools, and it's easy to break it up into multiple files and to keep it in version control.
Macros make it easy to reformat your document instantly and consistently, rather than scrolling to every page and clicking "arial bold 14pt" on every heading.
>>44350419
Meh, I just love it.
Usually it's much faster than anything else, but yeah, I've been known to overdo it with the whole 'learning new stuff' thing.
But hey, I like doing that.
>>44352278
Install the latex plugin
>>44352308
what's with the lord of the rings font?
>>44352349
bully
>>44352308
>not building your own template
>>44350419
oh boy, I do. but what I do these days is that I've got a few preset packages which include most stuff I need, depending on which subject im covering. been using it so much that I know most stuff by heart...
>>44352172
Looks nice, but I wouldn't use the @ symbol. It's also really weird to see the time on the y-axis.
Alright, I'm sold. How do I start using latex?
>>44354867
JewTube has a few good tutorials.
>>44354830
pretty sure he messed that up
>x axis increases linearly
>y axis: -8ns
>>44352172
>3 hours to make two goddamn graphs
Jesus, you really are an idiot. If it really was so hard to generate them within latex you just should have just used an external tool to generate the graphs. I really doubt it was too hard though.
>>44354916
Nigga you just don't get it.
>>44352172
What the fuck is with those axis? Multiple voltages at a single time?
>>44355374
it's /g/ science
>>44352172
>3 hours to make graphs that shitty looking
No wonder nobody takes you guys seriously
>>44352278
there's a latex plugin which compiles a .tex file to pdf when you :w in vim, and then you can have that pdf opened in evince side-by-side so that the preview reloads automatically after you :w
>>44351193
What? Just take that page from the PDF.
>>44351335
>one post from someone who's obviously not good with LaTeX
>proof
>>44351335
Many journals demand articles in .tex, nigga.
>>44350419
>spend 6 hours on LaTeX formatting
>never need to dick with formatting again
Alternatively
>write content
>use LaTeX template distributed by publisher/journal
>give zero fucks
>>44350419
I have a hate-hate relationship with LateX. Courses that let you scan handwritten documents are the best thing ever.
>>44350503
It's also about a fifth of the size on disk
>>44355661
Your dick is about a fifth of the size on disk.
templates my friend
>>44355688
Typical latex shill damage control
>>44355719
>shill
>nothing to sell
>>44355719
ill wrap ur dick in latex u fukin cunt
>>44355728
>even latex shills admit it's nothing
>>44355747
There's no backpedaling out of this one, son. You dun goofed.
>>44355719
Shill != fanboy
>>44355760
Just give it up shill, you're caught out
>>44355774
>>44355760
>this shill samefaggery
>>44352308
I used it for the last two rounds of job hunting, both were successful.
>>44355781
>>44355719
>>44355747
>shill
>free as in gratis
>>44355788
>>44355808
>f12
>>44351429
Not all of us have the gift of being able to read.
>>44355813
>backpedaling this hard
>>44355824
>not knowing what backpedaling means
Have any of you troff users ever done anything with the "mom" set of macros?
>>44354867
look up the basics and convert document you have into latex
Never heard of this Troff thing. How come TeX is more popular than it?
>>44352172
if it took you 3h to make those in gnuplot (I'm assuming you used gnuplot, because, what else?), then you're either a bit of an idiot or very new to using it
to make pic related, that was a pain in the ass...
>>44355374
OP here. I knew someone would eventually point that out. It's supposed to be Voltage v. Time. The axis labels are inverted.
>>44356287
It was more like 3 hours trying to find a good PSPICE program that plotted the graphs smoothly and didn't fuck me over with trial/demo restrictions. To be honest, I could have done it much faster if I manually calculated the sinusoidal voltage equation for each circuit node and used scilab to plot it.
>>44355508
pls gibe name
>>44356923
iirc latexmk is a program that tracks changes in your .tex and compiles it automatically
>>44356908
>plotted the graphs smoothly
why don't you just extract the data to .dat/.csv format and use gnuplot to load that?
What are some good troff guides?
>>44357163
bump for interest
>>44357163
http://troff.org/papers.html
``Troff Tutorial'' and ``Troff Users' Manual'' are pretty good.
http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/
The Groff manual.
The groff man page,$ man 7 groff
is also really good.
>>44355872
No, I've only really used -ms.
Mom sounds pretty cool, but I don't know much about it.
>>44356134
Troff is still used for man pages.
I think TeX overtook it because old Troff had some cruftiness like only allowing two-letter macro names, and TeX produced nicer output.
>>44358386
This is better than TeX and LaTeX?
LaTeX is very good but there's some serious room for improvement.
I'd like to see an alternative.
>>44358557
For most people, probably not, since TeX is more supported these days.
I'd say you should probably be familiar with TeX before you try Troff, to get used to the idea of using a macro-based text-formatting language
If you're a fan of the Unix philosophy and appreciate pipelines of simple tools, you might enjoy Troff.
I like using Troff for text with simple diagrams and figures, but if you have complex equations or ``just so'' formatting requirements, you're probably better off with TeX.
vim cv.tex
Add new list
:wq
latexpdf cv.texError: Line 3, /list not defined
"O, Great!"
Repeat
"Latex is Master race" - Neckbeards
>>44350419
>be faggot
>care about latex
>>44352308
Damn nigga this is sexy.
>>44359414
HIV is a serious thing.
where do i put packages that are not available in my distro's repos?
>>44352172
sorry m8
>>44357041
I did export the CSV data. There weren't enough points in the graph and it looked jagged in both LaTeX and PSPICE.
>>44361950
Thanks for pointing that out. I was using different widths (\textwidth vs 0.8\paperwidth).
>>44362497
hmm, then maybe it was just a simulator configuration issue, probably too big of a timestep, assuming you were doing transient simulations
