[HN Gopher] The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typ... ___________________________________________________________________ The Art of LaTeX: Common mistakes and advice for typesetting proofs Author : fanpu Score : 207 points Date : 2023-01-08 14:22 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (fanpu.io) (TXT) w3m dump (fanpu.io) | gnull wrote: | One bit I would add: don't use xspace package. If you defined a | macro with 0 argumemts like | \newcommand\kek[0]{kak} | | You must always put {} after it's invocation like "\kek{}". If | you do "\kek", that may eat the following space in some cases. | Doing "\kek\ " or "\kek\xspace" is bad and harmful. | jakobov wrote: | Anyone know of any good typesetters who I can hire to typeset an | ebook? | grecy wrote: | I've written my books in Latex - the pdf output goes to Amazon | for the print copy, and then I run it through pandoc to get a | perfectly formatted epub that I upload to amazon and apple and | anywhere else. | | It takes a bit to get setup, but now I have the template going | it makes a perfectly formatted book a breeze. | | I wrote about it here: http://theroadchoseme.com/how-i-self- | published-a-professiona... | carterschonwald wrote: | Great cheat sheet, not enough folks know about \mid and friends. | | Once you're in nyc let's grab coffee sometime! | fanpu wrote: | Thank you! :) and sure! | walnutclosefarm wrote: | I have a question: if what you have to write in order to create | your beautiful and aesthetically pleasing proof, and thereby | "establish your ethos and character" (presumably as a righteous | and good), is an ugly and fragile instance of a poorly designed, | inherently unreadable, archaic language that embodies none of the | characteristics you are after, can the result really be "a work | of art that combines both the precision and creativity of your | logical thinking, as well as the elegance of a beautifully | typeset writing?" | generationP wrote: | TeX is not unreadable. It's hard to automatically parse, but it | is easy to read by a human, unless the authors have been piling | hacks and too-smart-by-half constructs. The latter case happens | every once in a while but is generally pretty rare. | ivan_ah wrote: | > RE: ugly and fragile instance of a poorly designed, | inherently unreadable, archaic language | | That's a lot of hate for LaTeX, and some of it is warranted, | but you have to think of the results, not the source... It's | not the source code that people are in love with, but the | result (rendered PDF or via MathJax/KaTeX on the web). The | "ugly" markup syntax allows you to produce beautiful, | versatile, well designed, readable, and modern math equations. | | As for the latex source code, I think it's redeeming qualities | are the fact that it is a _standard_ (with over 40+ years track | record). It 's definitely not readable, or user-friendly (try | adding or forgetting a single }), but people seem to get used | to it after a while. | | Another thing I could say in defence of tex syntax, is that it | is necessary complexity. If it wasn't the backslash-macros and | curly braces, we would need some other way to express structure | in equations, so the same complexity would be present in a new | look. | zzless wrote: | What a great summary! Unfortunately, many discussions of TeX | vs alternatives are somewhat thin on details and are instead | trading on emotions. As you mentioned in your comment, the | choices made by Knuth are far from random. He even made it | possible for anyone to change them! Not many people using TeX | know that the choice of the backslash as an 'escape' | character may be easily changed. Even the necessity of curly | braces may be avoided using carefully designed macros. LaTeX | took a different path but it is only one possible choice. It | is telling that no real alternatives have emerged during the | 40+ years of TeX's existence. | ogogmad wrote: | Asciidoc, TexMacs, LyX, reStructuredText, Markdown | (admittedly, only ish). | | None of them have become the standard. But some of the ones | above - though excluding Markdown - are a complete | replacement. | | Actually, even Markdown stands a chance if supplemented | with enough HTML and CSS. HTML and CSS have practically | replaced most non-maths uses of Latex. | catiopatio wrote: | None of those are a complete replacement, except _maybe_ | Lyx, and it's based on LaTeX. | | > HTML and CSS have practically replaced most non-maths | uses of Latex. | | Huh? You must be totally ignorant of the uses of LaTeX. | ogogmad wrote: | This comment makes me see red. | | First of all, this: | | > None of those are a complete replacement, except maybe | Lyx, and it's based on LaTeX. | | Source: Your [censored]. | | > Huh? You must be totally ignorant of the uses of LaTeX. | | Outside of academic papers and books, what? | [deleted] | cratermoon wrote: | How many of those rely on LaTeX syntax extensions to | render equations? | TchoBeer wrote: | I can't speak for most of them because I haven't used | them, but I know that TexMacs doesn't use LaTeX under the | hood. | ogogmad wrote: | The LaTeX formula language is a separate thing from the | rest of LaTeX: It's become the standard for formulas. | There are some editors that can speed up writing those | formulas. Asciidoc also offers an alternative formula | language. | zzless wrote: | The way I see it, this only proves my point. As you | write: '...None of them have become the standard...' and | this is at the center of the argument. TeX may not be | ideal but it strikes the correct balance to become and | stay standard for so many years. One can do pretty much | anything in bare Postscript (and I am ashamed to admit, I | have) or even 'handmade' PDF but it does not make it a | good alternative to TeX. I have experimented with | alternative syntaxes (apologies it this is not the | correct plural of 'syntax') but had to give all of them | up due to a number of flaws. These experiments gave me a | new appreciation for Knuth's choices. | ogogmad wrote: | I disagree. I think Latex will soon become legacy like | Cobol. | | HTML and CSS basically do a lot more than Latex does - | except for maths things - and are far more widely known, | and far more forgiving. Also importantly, they support | hyperlinks, animations, and inline interactive scripts. | It seems that HTML and CSS with the appropriate CSS | styles and shorthands (like Markdown) could eat up | everything that Latex does and much more. I don't know if | Latex can survive the onslaught. | catiopatio wrote: | > I think Latex will soon become legacy like Cobol. | | LaTeX's usage has only increased with the creation and | growth of the web. What makes you think it's going | anywhere? | ogogmad wrote: | Academia has got inertia. How long has it taken it to | adopt Open Access? There's far more investment into web | tech than into Latex. Browsers can do more than PDF | readers. | zodiac wrote: | The "except for math" part is doing a lot I think. | There's a huge amount of work needed to get rendered math | to look as good as latex's and I'm not sure CSS (as an | example) is expressive enough to get this done | zzless wrote: | I have heard HTML/CSS mentioned as an alternative and I | pray every day this time will never come. Even taking all | the complaints leveled at LaTeX at face value, using | HTML/CSS looks like pure hell to me. Allow me to | elaborate. | | 1. You mentioned forgiving. One may not like the style of | TeX error messages but its tracing facilities are | extensive and given enough time and perseverance one can | track nearly any layout issue down an correct it. Compare | this to CSS silently ignoring incorrect syntax, having | different syntax across browsers, etc. I would take | strict syntax checking over this mess any day. | | 2. Many complained that LaTeX has more than one way of | achieving the same result. True but how many ways are | there of centering a div on a page? I can list six off | the top of my head and there are probably more. | | 3. You casually mentioned '...except for maths things...' | but this is far from minor. I cringe when I read | engineering papers not written in TeX: the formulas are | so ugly that they border on unreadable. | | 4. CSS may be wider known but unlike TeX CSS is a moving | target. Being designed by a committee it carries all the | flaws, like kludgy design in the name of 'compatibility', | poor choices of syntax to make it appeal to a wider | audience, etc. The designers of CSS are so enamored with | the 'cascade' but in practice it is rarely used as | intended. The 'important!' kludge as a perfect testament | to this. | | 5. LaTeX syntax may be unappealing to some but HTML takes | it to a whole other level: whitespace that affects the | layout yet no easy way of getting rid of it (HTML style | comments are a torture device); too verbose... one may | not like the backslash but what about <...> </...> ? Five | extra symbols! | | 6. LaTeX engines produce full featured PDF so hyperlinks | are not a problem (most LaTeX documents have them). Yes, | CSS has so called 3D graphics but it is anything but | programmer friendly. What good are 3D transforms if one | cannot even use simple lighting effects programmatically; | c'mon, at least give me Lambert reflection! Incidentally, | inline JavaScript can be included in pdf documents | produced by LateX as well (although ... why?) | eviks wrote: | > It is telling that no real alternatives have emerged | during the 40+ years of TeX's existence. | | But what does it tell you that such an ugliness remains and | the way to fix it is relatively unknown? It surely can't be | a pro-TeX tell! | zzless wrote: | It tells me that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, | i.e. what one may perceive as ugliness, countless others | will view as beauty or, at least functionality. I | personally think that the ugliest design in existence is | Python but I admit my opinion is not common. Moreover, I | use Python myself, since syntax is not the only important | thing in a language (the ecosystem is Python's | undisputable strength). It is also unclear to me what | specific 'ugliness' in TeX is fixed by, say TeXmacs. Is | TeXmacs internal language dramatically (or any) better | than TeX? Does not seem so. The WYSIWYG option? There are | WYSIWYG editors for TeX as well. | mgubi wrote: | "here are WYSIWYG editors for TeX as well." not there are | not. Apart from TeXmacs I know of no editor which give | you on the screen the same result you get on the paper. | LyX has not such a feature. If an approximation is ok, | then fine, but I do not think you can call it WYSIWYG. Is | something else. And it requires a lot of work to do it | correctly. You should at least appreciate the technical | merits, even if you prefer to use LaTeX for its | ecosystem. But as a user of both I see the clear merits | of TeXmacs in terms of quality of my work | (mathematician), I can focus more on _what_ I 'm doing, | instead on deciphering the mess of the LaTeX formulas and | try to find where to put a correction. I can give online | lectures with it, discuss on zoom while scribbling on a | TeXmacs document, much of the work I was doing on paper I | do now directly on the computer. To me there is a clear | difference in the user experience between TeXmacs and | LaTeX and I will never go back to write LaTeX if I can | help it (I do it sometimes, if my coauthors are using it | and do not want to try otherwise). | zzless wrote: | As a fellow mathematician you may then appreciate the | fact that local and global maxima may differ dramatically | which pretty much precludes true WYSIWYG (not just in | TeX) in that you have to settle for one of the two: | visual output with suboptimal aesthetics (TeXmacs, and, | to some extent, LyX) or perfect results that you have to | compile with some delay. It has nothing to do with the | computational power available but rather with the | occasional highly unstable line breaking. Even in MS Word | it is annoying sometimes to see it resize a current line | even though it uses a rather lame line breaking routine. | TeX does have facilities for almost real time WYSIWYG | (SyncTeX was added specifically for that purpose) | although they take some effort to set up. As far as | concentrating on the work at hand I have written whole | papers without compiling the document once before | everything was complete. I admit it takes some getting | used to but I prefer something I can grep through to a | mere pretty picture. I admit if my work was heavy on | large commutative diagrams I might have had a different | view. One thing I totally agree with you on is that | TeXmacs is an outstanding piece of software. I would just | prefer to keep my documents in TeX (which TeXmacs can | export, kinda). | Skeime wrote: | In my experience, that's not entirely true. Some of my | mathematician friends claim that they (and other people they | know) often rather read the source code than the type-set | result. I'm inclined to believe it because the biggest | problem with LaTeX (to me) is jumping between the source and | the result while editing, especially when formulas are | involved. (Syncing tools help, but they're far from perfect.) | So it is often more convenient to just work with the source | but this leads to problems where mis-typeset formulas don't | get recognized because too little time is spend with the | result and they look fine in the source. And then people | start reading the source code of other people's papers | because it's more understandable, making the whole thing | absurd. | charlieyu1 wrote: | but the source is the problem. When you work with 100+ latex | files and it is so difficult to reuse the code and every | variable is in a giant global scope, you would waste so much | time just to trying to figuring out how it works. | Shorel wrote: | As ugly as it may appear to you, it is so much more readable | than MathML Core. | | TeX is, in fact, still better than all the alternatives to | represent mathematical equations in plain text created so far. | charlieyu1 wrote: | MathML is not a writing format, it is an output format that | is designed to be machine readable. | | And I think most people complain about the non-equation parts | of LaTeX. | contravariant wrote: | Well no, but LaTeX should be backwards compatible with TeX so | there's always that option. | semi-extrinsic wrote: | LaTeX is robust enough and has a consistent enough interface | that with some macros and snippets you can take real-time notes | of people giving graduate level math lectures on a blackboard. | If LaTeX is ugly, it's in the same sense as APL is "ugly". | rsfern wrote: | Generally agreed, writing should be a tool that supports clear | thinking, and a giant mess of unreadable markup is not amenable | for thinking. | | I'm still reading through this post, but it seems to have some | great advice for making that situation at least a little | better, like the trick with mathtools to make paired braces | more readable | | I collaborate with some academics that strongly prefer to do | all writing and editing in MS Word, but I've personally found | that to be a lot worse for supporting clear thinking, | especially if any math is involved | fanpu wrote: | Great question! Is there a specific domain/example that you | have in mind? I don't think people intentionally use archaic | language if their goal is to educate and enlighten, but in | papers it is quite common for unnecessary jargon to be peppered | in, which while probably obvious to the author, makes it hard | for people new to the field to break in. | fanpu wrote: | Realized I misunderstood your question. IMO the main design | problem with LaTeX from a usage-standpoint is that there are | too many ways of achieving the same thing, and oftentimes | none of them is a clear winner. It's still the best option | for a usable, programmable typesetting language that we have | (i.e writing for-loops to draw structured graphs in TikZ...) | titzer wrote: | My personal beef with LaTeX, other than the utterly | atrocious syntax, is that it a.) endlessly barfs on your | terminal during its normal operation and b.) does not | respond to normal terminal interaction upon an error (wth | is it expecting? I interactively edit and correct | mistakes!?). So it's scroll blindness and flailing all the | way, a kludgy, rickety mess. Not to mention its utter mess | of a package management system. | tephra wrote: | It should be noted that TeX wa s of course designed to | actually be interactive and stop letting you fix errors. | | I went through the texbook by Knuth last year and my eyes | were opened (also note that I am an incurable (La)TeX fan | so my opinion is biased) | w4rh4wk5 wrote: | For the terminal output issue, consider latexrun | https://github.com/aclements/latexrun | DocTomoe wrote: | I am still looking for a text markup system that gives me good | PDFs with DTP-grade text setting and and is plain-text, so I | can work with standard version control programs. Right now, | only TeX/LaTeX comes close. AsciiDoctor is not doing citations | well, Markdown is basically a mess which differs in | implementation, also footnotes and citations. | | Do you have something better? | chaoxu wrote: | How is Quarto? It uses Pandoc Markdown. | elashri wrote: | There was a discussion about that last year [1] | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042831 | gglitch wrote: | I don't have an opinion about whether they're better or | worse, but have you tried groff or heirloom troff? | hanche wrote: | I think (though I can't find a reference) that Knuth hoped | that some of the algorithms developed for TeX, such as the | hyphenation and line breaking algorithms, would catch on and | be used by other, non-TeX typesetting software. If that has | ever happened, I a unaware of any examples. That's a pity. | atlintots wrote: | In this case, of course. The final product (the document), once | produced, is much more independent of the underlying code than | "normal" software. Once the document has been produced, it | doesn't really matter whether you used Word or LaTeX or ConTeXt | or whatever. | w4rh4wk5 wrote: | Until you have to change, quote, or re-use parts of it, in | another document. | fanpu wrote: | There are tools (i.e https://mathpix.com/) that actually | does a pretty great job at LaTeX OCR, although you'll need | to re-create labels and the like. I was pleasantly | surprised that it replicated alignments & chose the right | font faces while using it. | KMnO4 wrote: | I find writing LaTex is like painting a beautiful sunset using | pig's blood. The results are beautiful, but don't look behind | the canvas or too deeply into the artist's mental health | following that. | carapace wrote: | You're crapping on a thing that Knuth and friends made and gave | you for free. | | Are you about to go write something better? | daly wrote: | Latex and Tex, my goto language for beautiful documents. | | Try rewriting Knuth's books with markdown. | DiogenesKynikos wrote: | LaTeX is great, but God forbid you want to move a figure up a | centimeter on the page. | | That'll cost you an hour of reading through StackExchange | threads, and you'll probably come up empty. | mattkrause wrote: | It is not exactly a picnic in Word either though.... | generationP wrote: | Just don't use figure when you don't want them to float, but | just use \includegraphics or whatever environment you're using? | Floating figures are a pain in the ass in any system, as their | positioning relies on the rest of the text already being | formatted but simultaneously mess with that same formatting. | billfruit wrote: | Is there a reasonable assessment of where LaTeX's capabilities | are falling short? One of these may be laying out tables without | need for manual intervention/adjustment. Another could be easier | ways to customise look and feel of documents.For example the | "letter" document class is too bare-bones. | generationP wrote: | There are lots of things that are worth improving. | | The lack of accessibility features (structured PDF, alt-text), | or more precisely the glacial pace at which they are getting | developed, is grating. In truth, a well-written TeX file is | itself accessible in most reasonable senses, but not everyone | posts TeX sources of their work. It reminds me of the early | 2000s when making PDFs was considered high wizardry and | everyone was dealing with half-broken PS and DVI. | | Better tables would be nice, but it's not clear what a perfect | support for tables would even be. Unlike HTML, TeX has deal | with page size limitations, and it's far from clear how tables | should adapt to those. | eterevsky wrote: | Maybe I'm nitpicking, but the very first section of this | document, entitled "Typesetting as a Form of Art" contains in the | first two lines an incorrect opening quotation mark (`` instead | of ") and a hyphen (-) instead of an em-dash (-). | fanpu wrote: | Ah, I guess that's what happens when you do both Markdown and | LaTeX in the same document! Thanks for pointing it out, I've | also been pretty sloppy with hyphen and em-dash in normal | writing. Maybe someone could write a similar post for online | HTML content in the future? | dfan wrote: | If this article gets even one author to stop using < and > when | they mean \langle and \rangle, it will be worth it. | chaoxu wrote: | Many LaTeX tricks only get passed down from advisors to students, | or from collaborators to collaborators. Rarely someone would look | for how to improve their typesetting when all they want is to | quickly communicate content. | | It be nice if content and typesetting can be completely | separated, where I just write content, and something (LaTeX, AI, | some manual typesetter) does all the typesetting. | | Also, should I be the one controlling how the reader consume my | content? Maybe the reader prefers another font? Or the reader is | viewing in a kindle so pdf page size should be different? | | This would be impossible unless the reader have my LaTeX source | code and compile it themselves. But it is super simple for epub, | or html webpage (by modifying the css). | pinewurst wrote: | To a certain degree, the LaTeX environment is already like | that. I designed my custom resume style years ago and rarely | touch it. I often tweak the actual content which gets poured | into the style to produce the final document. The few changes | I've made to the style have never affected the (separate) | content either. | zzless wrote: | > This would be impossible unless the reader have my LaTeX | source code and compile it themselves. But it is super simple | for epub, or html webpage (by modifying the css). | | Well ..., wouldn't the html page be the source code in this | case? Also, in most cases changing the look of a LaTeX document | is as simple as changing the docuent class or switching to a | different package. Also, modifying CSS is anything but simple | in some cases, especially when the original style is not ideal. | fanpu wrote: | > Many LaTeX tricks only get passed down from advisors to | students, or from collaborators to collaborators. | | Which is a great point on why the average quality of LaTeX | homework submissions by undergraduates without any research | experience usually makes for a less-than-ideal grading | experience. And this is not about the nit-picky mistakes, but | the visually glaring ones. | cratermoon wrote: | Several of the images are broken links. Perhaps an example of | Muphry's Law? | fanpu wrote: | Should be fixed now. First time hearing about Muphry's Law, | definitely gave me a chuckle! | hanche wrote: | > First time hearing about Muphry's Law | | It was probably a mipsrint. | cratermoon wrote: | Nope. | cratermoon wrote: | Works now. I do very little writing that requires math, | although I did have occasion to present Muller's Recurrence | for a discussion on floating point arithmetic. The tip | "Expressions Should Be Punctuated Like Sentences" is a good | one, and generalizes somewhat to inline code or any inline | figure or table in writing. | fanpu wrote: | Refreshing might help (my guess is it might be due to img | fallback issue), thanks for flagging this and I'll be | investigating! | generationP wrote: | Most of this is good advice, but I don't see the \mathbbm vs. | \mathbb distinction as anything other than subjective taste. | | Also, I use things like | \newcommand{\abs}[1]{\left| #1 \right|} | | in the preamble. This way, I can use \abs{...} without any | asterisks, and it automatically adjusts its size. In the 1% | situations where I don't want it to adjust the size, I write the | delimiters manually. | | Making maths look good in LaTeX is pretty well-understood these | days; authors who don't are usually just being lazy. The big | undocumented mess with LaTeX is making bibliographies work | correctly. The "standard" bibtex workflow is broken in many ways, | and I have never seen a tutorial on how to fix it. With | bibliographies being such a minuscule part of a mathematical | paper, I'm not surprised that no one cares, but the result is | lots of references that are imprecise, missing important info or | plain wrong. | enriquto wrote: | Both mathbbm and mathbb are wrong for number sets. These fonts | look like the blackboard hack that you use to simulate boldface | using chalk. On a computer you don't have this problem and you | can simply use mathbf (actual boldface). | generationP wrote: | It might have originated as a hack, but now it's a font in | its own right. Why not use it? | | It's quite common to see \mathbb{R} used for the actual set | of reals, while \mathbf{R} means a totally ordered field | (i.e., an abstract object behaving somewhat like \mathbb{R}). | The distinction is deliberate and the notation is good. | enriquto wrote: | > Why not use it? | | Better question: why use it, when you can use the real | thing? | | Mathematicians concerned by typography universally use real | boldface. For example: Terrence Tao's blog, Donald Knuth, | Paul Halmos (author of "how to write mathematics"), and the | famous journal "Publications Mathematiques de l'IHES" which | is the undisputed gold standard in mathematical typography. | They use real boldface for the number sets N, Z, Q, T, R, | C. | | I've never seen a boldface R to mean a set different than | the real numbers. Maybe this is some fringe custom in model | theory, but in mainstream mathematics it has a clear and | standard meaning. Can you point me to a paper where they | use a boldface R with such a meaning (i.e., different than | the reals). I'm sure that this usage would always be | accompanied by a clarification to avoid any confusion. | generationP wrote: | Huh, it appears a lot less frequent than I thought. I had | misremembered some \mathrm{R}'s as \mathbf{R}'s. | | That said, I still feel that I've seen every \mathbf | letter used for something other than a standard number | set somewhere. But probably not in the mainstream. | danbruc wrote: | In his papers Terence Tao is inconsistent [1][2][3], | maybe because of formatting requirements? But boy is real | boldface ugly [3] and sticks out like some tomato ketchup | on a white wedding dress. | | [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.07441.pdf | | [2] https://annals.math.princeton.edu/wp- | content/uploads/annals-... | | [3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0512114.pdf | orlp wrote: | Who is Terrence Tao? Do you mean Terence Tao? | | (if we are nitpicking about typography...) | enriquto wrote: | Heh. | | Sorry about that. A common typo. The keys are like right | next to each other. | Skeime wrote: | True boldface has a much darker type color than | blackboard bold, thus drawing your eyes to it. But | usually, the occurrences of, say, the real numbers are | not the most interesting or important part on the page | and they thus don't deserve that emphasis. | | (Also, admittedly, I like the look of these letters.) | fanpu wrote: | Interesting explanation on how it developed historically. | I've seen mathbf used in some books, but I guess old | conventions are hard to change. | gnull wrote: | \DeclarePairedDelimiter\abs{\lvert}{\rvert} | | Isn't this better than newcommand? This makes both \abs{x} and | \abs*{x} valid. | BrandonS113 wrote: | This is the first time I have seen such a complaint against | bibtex. Yes bib files are finicky to write correctly, and | bibtex can be a pain to use. But bibliographies are never | "imprecise, missing important info or plain wrong." I've | written 100s of pieces with latex+bibtex, papers, websites, | reports, books. bibtex always makes citations and bib entries | look like what I or the publisher need. If something is | missing, then one is using the wrong style. | generationP wrote: | I have seen very few fully correct bibliographies written | with bibtex in the wild. Not everything wrong with bibtex is | a bug; the big problem is that bibtex is not adapted to its | modern usage. A non-comprehensive list of problems: | | 1. Does anyone run bibtex directly from the command line? No, | it's an extra step and the syntax is hard to memorize (should | it run on the tex or the bib, and with or without the | extension?). Instead, everyone eventually uses some form of | script that does "pdflatex; bibtex; pdflatex; pdflatex" or | something like this. Nice and slick; unfortunately it means | that all warnings get hidden from view. A common mistake | (particularly when copypasting) is accidentally having two | AUTHOR fields in a bibitem, which causes the second to be | ignored. No way you'll notice until you look carefully at the | bibliography or read the bibtex log. It doesn't help that | many of the warnings are false alarms. | | 2. Writing bibitems is probably as painless as it could be, | but still painful enough that most people have "wandering" | bib files that move from project to project. Unfortunately, | this creates lots of problems: | | 2A. A book gets a reedition, or an arXiv preprint gets | updated. You just update the reference, right? Wrong, of | course, because your old references now lead to the wrong | pages, sections, theorems. | | 2B. There are bibliography styles that print DOI fields but | not URLs. There are ones that print URLs but not DOIs. There | are some that print both, which is redundant. With a | wandering bib file, which ones do you cater to? No way to do | right by them all. | | 2C. With grey literature, a URL is often necessary, but many | bibliography styles don't print URLs. So you end up including | it in a NOTE field, which of course gets it duplicated in | those styles that do print URLs. | | 3. Too many foot-guns. | | 3A. Bibtex (or most styles) automatically removes | capitalization in titles ("Generalizations of dyck words"). | Why? Why??? Yes, you can fix it by putting the {C}apital | letters in braces. But why should you? | | 3B. You cannot use the packages or macros from your tex file | in your bib file, as it's a separate file. Of course... but | that makes you wonder why it should be a separate file to | begin with. | | 3C. Yes, you heard it right: no package, in particular no | unicode support. | | 3D. Basically every bibtex tutorial tells you to not trust | bibitem-generating services, even the most official ones | (IEEE, ACM). But no one has the time to do this on their own, | and it stands to reason that there should be a common source | at least for everything that is published and indexed. We got | ORCID and DOI; is this that much harder? | bee_rider wrote: | If they make it into the wild, who cares if they are fully | correct? The rules for a "fully correct" bibliography are | too strict anyway. DOI or URL? Who cares? The reader is | just going to search for the title anyway. As long as it | doesn't bounce off the publisher it is fine (which, it must | not be bouncing off the publishers if it makes it into the | wild). | generationP wrote: | Googling the title works for reasonably new papers. Not | so good for textbooks, old papers (titles used to be a | lot less expressive 50 years ago), conference proceedings | (often not indexed by article anywhere, and the name of | the volume can be ambiguous), grey literature like | lecture notes (a URL would allow you to use the Wayback | Machine). | | Also, don't count on authors to get the title right. | mattkrause wrote: | By these standards, are any citation managers adapted to | modern use? | | I'm definitely open to the idea that we should change how | we refer to other findings, but EndNote, Zotero, and the | like also can't save you from new editions, overly-strict | rules about reference formatting, and bad publisher- | provided information. | | If you _can_ deviate slightly from a particular reference | format, it's fairly easy to emit either a DOI or a URL (but | not both): | https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/154864/biblatex- | use-... One of the linked answers even suppresses DOI-like | URLs. | BrandonS113 wrote: | I agree with much of what you say. I certainly find bibtex | frustrating. On your specific points | | 1. I might be the only one, but I do sometimes, for the | reasons you say. To debug it. But yes, debugging bibtex | files is a a real pain. | | 2. yes, but that is hardly bibtex's fault, would be the | same with any system. | | 2A. (same response as 2) | | 2B Yes, and so have both fields in the bibtex files. Its | the publisher who decided what they want, DOI, ULR or both | or neither. Not bibtex's fault | | 2C dont know what "gray literature" is, sorry. | | 3. YES! | | 3A, Think you always will need something like that | regardless of bibliography system. The publisher dictates | only first word in title is capitalised, how then do you | tell it to capitalize USA or Mary? {} is as good as any | alternative. | | 3B. yes. I never had any need for that. do you mean | \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} | | 3C. yes, to be safe, one needs these weird latex formatting | for foreign characters. | | 3D. Yes. Well I have the time. When I get a bibtex entry | from some external source, It usually needs tweaking. And | usually fastest is just to write it manually. But its a a | trivial amount of effort | vcxy wrote: | For 1, I just use latexmk. I honestly assumed that was | standard but I guess not? It comes with TeXLive anyway. For | the rest, I use Zotero with betterbibtex and with both that | and LaTeX in general I use the more recent biblatex instead | of bibtex. | | This won't fix everything you've mentioned, but I feel like | I generally have a lot fewer issues than what your comment | would suggest. | ilayn wrote: | Use `DeclarePairedDelimiter` from `mathtools`. | | The rule of TeX is that anything that is written in TeX is | instantly old. Because people don't read what Knuth had in | mind. TeX was the prototype not the production grade product. | Still people refuse to get the message. | colejohnson66 wrote: | Well, Knuth still writes all his stuff using "plain" TeX. For | example, the source of the TeXbook and the METAFONTbook are | both TeX, not LaTeX or whatnot. Granted, he did _create_ TeX, | so he 's probably more comfortable with it. | asymmetric wrote: | Does anyone know of similar lists of best practices, but for | humanities? E.g. for writing papers, study notes, presentation | slides, etc. | | I use org-mode to produce Latex, and find myself always needing | to remove the TOC, for example. The borders are always too wide, | etc. | | This is one that has some nice tips, wondering if there are | others: https://www.colinmclear.net/posts/teaching-notes/ | garrison wrote: | The final point, involving labels and references, could be | improved by mentioning cleveref: | https://ctan.org/pkg/cleveref?lang=en | quijoteuniv wrote: | I understand that some people do not want to use Latex, but i do | not get the hate. Not for you? Move on, do you own thing | yodsanklai wrote: | One thing I don't miss about my research years is latex. It does | produce beautiful documents and kudos to Knuth/Lamport for | producing a system that stood the test of time. But what a pain | to use. | ipunchghosts wrote: | It only lives on through cut and paste previous latex files and | stack overflow lol | Tainnor wrote: | Some of the images don't appear to render for me. | | Also, the author includes an example of _\int xyzdx_ and makes a | note of using appropriate spacing. It is my impression that | commonly the differential operator is typeset differently, that | is: _\mathrm{d}x_. | | Otherwise, great tips. | ogogmad wrote: | In physics, it's \mathrm dx. In mathematics, it's dx. | Tainnor wrote: | It would appear that it is even more complicated than that | and so depends on nationality, the field in question etc.: | https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/88961/31889 | | TIL | thanatropism wrote: | ? | quietbritishjim wrote: | Historically, by which I mean professional typeset documents | in early 20th century, it was upright d in both. It's often | italic dx in maths now probably just because doing it right | is tricky (at least non-zero effort) in LaTeX. | | In many articles, there isn't even spacing around | differentials. That doesn't mean that is correct too. It just | means that, like upright d, the author has more pressing | issues than small details of typesetting. | | It similar to how vectors (in physics / applied maths) are | represented by upright bold letter. Historically, these were | bold-italic - the same as how most variables are italic. But | early versions of TeX only supported fonts in regular, italic | and bold - no bold italic variants existed (even now, bold | italics are not universally available for Greek characters). | So people used upright bold for vectors, and now it's assumed | that it was deliberate. | zeur0aoV wrote: | Not really. It has nothing to do with LaTeX. Most of them | are italic in mathematics . For example, in Hermite's | textbook (1882) (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k979 | 81084/f31.item.tex...), page 13, the do is italic. In | Klein's Lectures on Mathematics (1894) (https://www.mathuni | on.org/fileadmin/ICM/Proceedings/ICM1893....) page 20, the | dx is italic. In Goursat's textbook (1933) | (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9454797/f107.item), | the dx is also italic. | mgubi wrote: | In my mathematics is \d x . | soegaard wrote: | FWIW there is an ISO Standard: | | > ISO 80000-2:2009 > Quantities and units -- Part 2: | Mathematical signs and symbols to be used in the natural | sciences and technology | | https://nhigham.com/2016/01/28/typesetting-mathematics-accor... | fanpu wrote: | Thanks for flagging the image issue, I think there's an issue | with the responsive image serving code that doesn't work | consistently across browser. Temporarily disabling that for now | & pushing a new update. | | Also, you are right about using \mathrm{d}x. Another friend | also just flagged it to me as well, I will update the post | regarding this! | [deleted] | quietbritishjim wrote: | It also doesn't mention the spacing after the dx. You need | spacing afterwards, but also not unconditionally if the thing | afterwards also has a space before (that sounds obvious but I | can imagine a macro that has \,\mathrm{d}#1\,). | | There is a better way to do this, which is to use LaTeX's built | in spacing adjustment, which is different around different | types of object (e.g. notice how ab+cd already looks right). To | do that, use: \mathop{\mathrm{d}#1} | | Even if you carefully do the "right thing", the spacing in | LaTeX is by no means perfect. E.g. just look at | f(x)g\left(\frac{x}{y}\right) - it looks like g is more | associated with f's arguments than its own. | litographic wrote: | Slightly off-topic question: any suggestions for modern | presentation LaTeX themes (besides Metropolis, | https://github.com/matze/mtheme)? | sampo wrote: | > Macros can also take arguments to be substituted within the | definition. | | Some journals ask you to submit your manuscript in plain LaTeX, | without defining your own macros. | gdprrrr wrote: | Usw autoref instead of ref and it will add the "Figure ", " | Chapter " etc automatically. And for Differentials, dwfine a | semantic macro like \dd from the physics package. I find quotes | are besr left to csquotes, which lets you define the type of | quotes and show they nest in the preamble. | fanpu wrote: | Wish I knew about autoref earlier, it also increases the area | spanned by the hyperlink generated to the entirety of "Figure | 1" instead of just "1" in the case of ref. | John23832 wrote: | I really wish there was a way to have shared editing on a doc, | similar to google docs, that used LaTex. | | I often have to share docs for work (in google docs) and the lack | of a clear way to format as eloquently as LaTex makes me not even | try. | everydayentropy wrote: | Have you tried overleaf? | fanpu wrote: | Overleaf (https://overleaf.com/) is pretty popular for this, | and also tracks things like edit history | orthonormel wrote: | Something like overleaf.com ? | amichail wrote: | TeXmacs allows you to typeset beautiful proofs via a WYSIWYG | editor without the pain of TeX/LaTeX. | | Note that its name is doubly misleading since it is not based on | TeX nor Emacs. It is however inspired by both. | | TeXmacs produces documents of similar quality to TeX/LaTeX. | fanpu wrote: | I was initially dreading that it would be something inefficient | like the equation symbol selector in Word, but after viewing | the video demo on their website and seeing the speed of typing | aided by heavy use of shortcuts, I'm intrigued. I'll try it out | someday! | zzless wrote: | TeXmacs is a great project, no doubt, but you have mentioned | WYSIWYG as one of the advantages. This is the main reason I do | not use TeXmacs to create documents (I do use it to create | online lectures). You may like or dislike LaTeX/TeX (and the | discussion is usually too emotionally charged for my taste) but | the fact that it is a text format (not as verbose as, say, XML, | at that) which is more or less standard is a deciding factor | for many people, including myself. On a personal level, while I | slightly dislike LaTeX style macros, I absolutely adore TeX's | design (yes, including syntax). It is a matter of taste, of | course. I am aware that TeXmacs can export LaTeX, it is not | quite the same. LyX is another (better in my view) WYSIWYG | option, if one is desired. | ogogmad wrote: | A TexMacs file can be opened up in any text editor. It's | readable -- XML-like without quite being XML. Presumably, | this can be used to work around some limitations of the | WYSIWYG editor. | | I think LyX's file format is not as well-designed. | ogogmad wrote: | Is there an equivalent of \NewCommand in TexMacs? I can't find | anything by Googling. | zeur0aoV wrote: | There is a good introduction in Chapter 12 of The Jolly | Writer: https://www.scypress.com/book_info.html | mgubi wrote: | TeXmacs has its own macro language. The equivalent of | \newcommand is \assign together with \macro (yes, TeXmacs has | proper first class macros, like any respectable language, | e.g. Lisp). And macros arguments can be edited visually, | here's an example: | https://twitter.com/gnu_texmacs/status/1251554336842407938 | mgubi wrote: | you can check also the manual which comes with the program, | in the menu Help->Manuals. | hello2023 wrote: | In the spacing section, the author's suggestion to use absolute | spacing operator (e.g \;) is actually not recommended. a better | way is to make `dx` a math operator (`d` is an operator isn't | it?). | | Some other suggestion is not actually recommended in the official | documentation of amsmath as I recall. | | Hope this helps. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-08 23:00 UTC)