What are your thoughts on LaTeX, TeX, or WYSIWYG editors like TeXmacs?
>WYSIWYG
>for writing LaTeX
It's almost as if the purpose is to be as inefficient as possible
>>55287337
TeXmacs is not for writing TeX.
It has a feature to export to TeX, but it uses its own format internally and for files.
The TeX export is not perfect, either.
>>55286964
See also: LyX
I never used it for an extended period of time, but it looks like a fine TeX/LaTeX WYSIWYG^HM
>>55288001
ahh, my bad. Personally though, I find myself better off using a text editor with some sort of LaTeX plugin for writing documents, as opposed to a WYSIWYG editor.
>>55286964
I used it to write my both final thesis. With o knowledge at start i preffered to learn it and write it there than to deal with ms word. I wish i knew it more but i keep learning other technologies and i dont need to deal with creating documents much.
I used LEd but only because its made by my university Phds and i was curious.
>>55287337
>Leaving the d of the Integral cursive
It's not a variable, it's an operator. It should not be italic.
>>55287337
I always wonder why all math texts are single-columned. It seems incredibly inefficient to me with regards to white space.
Why the fuck is LaTex 1 GB on Linux? It can't be that complicated.
>>55288154
Linux is a kernel, anon.
>>55286964
I fucking love latex. I wish I had things to write so i could use it and master it. I use vim-latex because I fall for ALL the /g/ memes
>>55288154
Because it includes most of CTAN
>>55288139
Never seen any of my lecturers or professors mention or even care about the distinction. But then again, this is just for a standard calculus course.
>>55288152
I personally do it because it's easier to follow and looks less messy.
>>55286964
I think that LaTeX is really great, I only discovered it this year but I just fell in love with it.
I like to write the source code directly, but an editor is needed to simplify the writing (for example if you don't remember *that* specific command).
Personally I use kile, because I like it, and I export directly to pdf, on the other screen I have the pdf reader that just updates the page when I export.
>>55287337
What Sublime Text theme is that?
>>55288450
Theme is Soda Dark, Color scheme is solarized dark.
Want to try it, do not have enough free time.
Is using LyX a good idea for someone who has to start from scratch?
>>55288812
You don't actually need a lot of time for the basics.
The wikibook about it is great, just skip the parts you don't need and you will come back when you need them
>>55288812
Lyx is great desu, unless you're on windows
I'm working on my first publication at the moment and was wondering how important it is to work in TeX? I've heard people say that you should but everyone I've seen just seems to write their papers in word.
>>55289100
Crows are smart fucks. It's kind of amazing how smart they can be while all most other birds are so dumb I'm not even sure if they're conscious
>>55289100
That really depends on the subject of your thesis. Anything math-related will get VERY tedious, VERY quickly if written i word.
>>55289304
Bullshit. Writing math in Word is even more fluent than with Latex, though Word might lack a few niche math features I don't know about
LaTeX is allegedly trying to put the content first and looks second by having the user only specify what type of writing he's doing at that point (stress this, this line is a heading, this is a subheading, the following is a quote etc etc), yet every LaTeX tutorial ever starts out teaching you hundreds of commands that you sprinkle your text with.
What you end up with is a mishmash of cleartext and markup code, and if you want to skim your text for errors or change the wording slightly, you have to go hunt for the actual content amidst a maze of markup codes. Even with proper indentation etc you still end up having to scroll a lot just to get to your text. Also before you can even begin to write you need to include a ton of libraries that handle basic shit like font encoding, paper format, line spacing and, obviously, what all those markup codes are supposed to do.
Compare with Libreoffice. It has prefefined templates for page styles, paragraph styles, character styles. I fiddle with them for 10 minutes tops if I'm starting from scratch and have to define some extra styles for source code or something like that / want to change some of the default settings. I can immediately see what the changes will look like.
Then I start to write. Every once in a while I hit a key combination to define a paragraph as a heading or as an illustration caption. With a couple of clicks I insert automatically generated illustration tables, indexes etc.
So far this doesn't differ from LaTeX, I just replaced writing markup expressions with keyboard shortcuts or clicks. The big advantage is, I can just skim the paper and all I see is the actual fucking text that I'm interested in in the first place -- the stuff that's obscured by all the markup codes in LaTeX.
Also I can see correct page numbers, cross references etc without having to compile the document two or three times first.
Use what you want but I love my LibreOffice.
>>55286964
I had to use this to compile my thesis.
The whole thing felt like a cryptic, cobbled together barely functioning disaster.
Like press compile five times in a certain order or it all goes wrong? You serious nigga?
Love LyX for quick math notes.
>>55289304
Thesis is on nanoparticle functionalism of nanoparticles. So there is some math.
>>55287337
well it IS a GNU project
>>55288812
No, LyX is garbage. The WYSIWYG features are more infuriating than helpful. Just learn TeX. You only need a two to three hour investment for the basics, then you just google as you go.
>>55289321
It's the alignment that's the issue. Try getting your equations to line up just right with equation numbers. Word is quicker if you just need to inset a few equations here and there. Beyond basic shit, it gets really tedious and slow.
>>55289790
Ah okay, in that case I don't disagree. I thought you were one of those people who think you still need to type math by clicking on symbols in Word
>>55289456
>has never written a math paper is in his life over five pages
>>55286964
I use LaTeX for papers etc as it's obligatory in my department. I don't use any specific editors as I'm not retarded. After a while (=six years of intensive use) you don't need buttons to remember a few commands.
>>55289891
I've only written one thesis and countless lab reports, each around 50 pages, including formulae out the ass. That's not much, of course.
The only thing I couldn't do with LibreOffice in terms of formulae is a one-sided brace, like when you define a step function or similar; Writer expects a matching closing brace. This small disadvantage is easily worth the infinitely better readability for me.
Your opinion might differ and that's fine. I'm no mathematician, I don't use the most complicated of formulae. LaTeX has its place in the world, and if you want to use it, by all means go ahead.
I just think it's silly to claim LaTeX makes text readability and writing its main priority when the text is obscured and broken up by markup tags and its advocates mostly cite the formulae as the main selling point.
>>55289456
What a load of bullshit. Have you ever even used LaTeX for an actual document or have you just read about it?
>>55289506
Not that anon, but I work in the computational biology field, and journals such as the American Chemical Society provide their own LaTeX template for submitting to them.
I would go ahead and tell you to learn LaTeX if you're going to be staying within the academic research field, it's almost a necessity.
>>55287337
> 445 lines of unreadable text
That's why I use lyx
>>55289996
I just tried LibreOffice's equation editor. Wow, what a piece of shit. They don't even have the decency to use LaTeX syntax like Word's. You have to be trolling, or your math typesetting needs are pleb-tier.
Show me a way to insert three equations, aligned at the equals symbol, with an equation number to the right of the equations in LibreOffice that's faster than TeX.
Your readability criticism is a red herring, too. If you want readability, compile the fucking file. If you need to edit that section of your TeX, ctrl+f, dummy.
>>55290053
LaTeX is actually perfectly readable. Text ist text and all commands usually have very descriptive names.
I'm currently using it to write a manual for a custom instrument system. I don't even really have much math in that document.
I enjoy it for the following reasons:
1) I know the formatting will be uniform and the default doctypes look decent.
2) I can can break apart sections into separate files and just have an include.
3) I can edit images and diagrams and have them automatically updated when the document is recompiled.
4) I can have large tables of components defined in their own files and then included in the main document.
5) It's cross platform
I used it last year for some homework assignments and really enjoyed using it. As was mentioned >>55289790 I could enter stuff quickly in Word, but I would always have to go back and screw with the formatting for a while.
>>55290081
there's no way your brain could interpret that text to the actual equation
latex vs lyx in the image
it just makes life easy
>>55290075
Nice how you assume that your needs apply to everyone else and resort to calling me names instead of recognizing that different people need different things out of their text editors, and get upset that someone might choose to use a "pleb tier" WYSIWYG editor instead of your hardcore pr0 1337 h4xx0r markup language.
My math typesetting is indeed pretty pleb tier. I tend to explain mathematical concepts using sketches and words instead of formulae, so I can get away with just having single formulae broken up by text. If I absolutely must use several equations in a row, aligned at the equation sign, I might use something likematrix{ralign{left side of equation 1} # = # lalign{right side of equation 1} ## ralign{blah blah} # = # lalign{bluh durr hurr}}
Might be misremembering the alignment commands, I don't give a shit.
> equation number to the right of the equations
I usually have a paragraph style for equations with a center-aligned tab stop at the center of the page (that's where the equation field goes) and a right-aligned tab stop at the right edge of the paragraph area (equation number goes here).
Yes, the previous two things are pretty hacky and might be less convenient than LaTeX. I'm sure there are easier ways to it and I haven't figured them out yet, but I use them so little that for my needs, it's not worth making the switch.
> LaTeX syntax
While that might be nice for someone who is used to LaTeX, it really doesn't matter to someone who isn't. But I agree, having unified commands would be beneficial if only for cross-compatibility.
> compile the fucking file
> ctrl+f
Sounds pretty inefficient to me 2bh. I could just click on a cross reference or a chapter title in the index, or the chapter title in the navigator, or scroll down, or use ctrl+f and change it.
>>55290246
I'm not very used to LaTeX and that looks reasonably readable.
But then again, I usually have no trouble reading complicated regexps.
