Re: [tlug] Poll: OpenOffice or LibreOffice?

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 9:30 AM, Travis Cardwell
<travis.cardwell@example.com> wrote:
> On 2014年05月20日 23:40, Raymond Wan wrote:
>> Indeed, it is troublesome but not that bad.  When you compile, the
>> output indicates what files it is including.
>
> Though it has been a while, I have had experiences of not understanding
> TeX errors, in spite of knowing the originating file.  I recall working
> with TeX code containing an inordinate amount of \relax [1] commands,
> trying to figure out how the various macros were behaving with partial
> application of parameters.  I even had to resort to "guess-and-check,"
> something that is very painful for a programmer to do.  I am much more
> capable today, but it took me years before I could consider myself
> proficient at non-trivial LaTeX.
>
> As Edward mentioned, separation of content and presentation is important.
>  At least the content of LaTeX projects can be made more accessible by
> strict separation.  People contributing to the content should not have to
> worry about TeX intricacies (example: fragility [2]).


TeX is really troublesome ... no arguments there!  Maybe because of
the existence of LaTeX, documentation of TeX on the Internet is
minimal (in comparison).  I wrote one or two TeX macros in my life but
gave up...


> Indeed.  Word documents are just text documents.  LaTeX documents, on the
> other hand, consist of text that is coupled with software.  Basic LaTeX
> usage, where users rely on classes/styles provided by others, is not much
> more difficult than using a word processor.  Non-basic LaTeX usage,
> however, *is* software development.


Yes.  Unless you're doing something fancy, I would presume the average
document should have more text than LaTeX commands...


> Bruno mentioned that he had difficulty formatting a haiku in LaTeX.  I
> imagine that his goal was only concerned with presentation, not the actual
> content of the haiku.  Creating a custom haiku layout in LibreOffice is
> very simple.  It is not so simple in TeX, where layout entails
> programming.  Using a standard LaTeX class is easy, but a custom haiku
> layout is not a standard, so even using LyX did not help.  If somebody has
> already gone to the trouble of writing a haiku class [3], you can download
> it and see if it meets your needs.  If you really want to make a custom
> class, however, you must learn a bit more.


Honestly, I don't know what is so special about haiku.  I would guess
that a haiku is a small part of a larger document.  As a result, it
would probably be more of a package and not a class.  Would the verse
package [1] be good enough, I wonder?


> As has been mentioned earlier in this thread, many people start LaTeX in
> an academic setting, in order to submit an article for publication or
> write a thesis.  In the vast majority of cases, this is basic usage, as
> all of the programming is done for them.  Even somebody who has written
> multiple articles and a thesis using LaTeX and has years of basic LaTeX
> experience might have difficulties doing something as seemingly simple as
> writing a custom haiku class.


Yes -- I've used it for many years, but I wouldn't even know where to
begin writing a class or package.  I wonder if this is related to my
comment about TeX?  There are more web pages and books about using
LaTeX but not much on writing a class or package.  (There is, but the
former has a lot more information.)  As such, most people don't know
what's going on under the hood...

About our first experience with LaTeX, I had to use it as part of a
software engineering course in undergraduate school and not for a
research paper.  The entire class had to use LaTeX to write the
software requirements, etc. documents that were submitted for marks.
We all hated it back then, but in hindsight, it was like learning two
things in one.  Even if you don't use it for the rest of your life, at
that age, you can absorb things easier.  So, no one complained about
it being useless.

Completely unrelated, but one thing that LaTeX is good as is with
packages like biocon for writing names of species.  (i.e., Homo
sapiens)  Rather trivial and you could do it with macros but
apparently in a document, the first time it appears, you are suppose
to write it out in full.  The second time, you are suppose to
abbreviate it as H. sapiens .  I'm not sure how strictly these rules
are followed in biology, but I can't imagine doing this without LaTeX.
 Imagine moving paragraphs around the document, etc.

Ray


[1]  http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/verse
[2]  http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/biocon