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Comment by olivierestsage | Hacker News Reader

I understand that the author wants to make a provocative statement/get a reaction, but I have to say I find the general tone of this post, and especially the claim "LaTeX is horseshit", extremely off-putting (not to mention clueless as to both the historic and continued significance of LaTeX). It makes me not even want to bother trying to discern whatever point the author might be attempting to make.

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I would also point out that most of his troubles stem from the somewhat amateurish approach to using LaTeX. Overfull boxes can be handled by relaxing the typographic requirements. If one desires the typesetting quality of MS Word and quicker builds, this can be easily arranged by manipulating \emergencystretch and such. LaTeX is not an editor, and the use of a carefully designed style would go a long way to eliminate most of his concerns. But proclaiming 'do not write documents in LaTeX, use Word instead' is just subjective garbage, to use his own terminology. Disclaimer: I do not particularly like LaTeX and prefer plain TeX myself.

To be fair, I've written my math papers in LaTeX, and I agree. Well, perhaps with the modification: "LaTeX errors are complete horseshit". Or perhaps blame the compiler.

Do you remember what gcc errors were like just as clang got popular? They were pretty bad before the c compilers started competing to have nice ones.

Those are wonderful in comparison to the errors in LaTeX.

Fucking extra newline breaking equation* and causing nonsense.

I really don't understand why people are so sensitive to tone when it is not even directed at anyone in particular.

LaTeX is the work of real people with feelings. You can criticise work without resorting to abuse. Also if you resort to abuse it makes me suspicious that you don’t have a strong enough argument without the theatrics.

Not just that, but AFAIU the switch to LaTeX is a relatively recent thing and accomplished by someone whose judgment I value far more than that of the article author.[1] Granted, I've never even heard of the article author before and was surprised the editor baton had been passed.

In general complaining in such terms about a project you've just taken over doesn't seem very professional.[2] We've all been there, done that, etc. LaTeX diagnostics are atrocious. All received large projects are filled with decisions one wouldn't have made oneself, and consequences one would have avoided. But it pays to remember that any senior engineer has presumably left in their wake several large projects that befuddled and frustrated subsequent maintainers, both because of regrettable reasons, yet also for reasons that one would readily defend.

But to suggest Microsoft Word as being a superior option... I can't even begin to fathom such a comparison. I can imagine, however, how insanely frustrated and pissed I would be if I had to take over the task of managing a huge, complex Microsoft Word document. I'm also prepared to admit that there may exist a universe (in which I might be living) where Word is a defensible choice over LaTeX, and that the choice might be more akin to common religious preferences--vi vs emacs, CLI vs GUI, etc--and not something that can be strictly judged in objective terms. Hopefully that admission would give me pause before I let loose such a tirade.

[1] AFAIU, Jens Gustedt was the previous editor, both initiating and executing the switch to LaTeX. But I've never participated in the committee. I may have had a mistaken belief about who was doing the editing over the past several years.

[2] That's a comment on the article, not on the author himself. Professionals do unprofessional things all the time.

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