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One example of why LaTeX is better than WYSIWYG.
http://filoxus.blogspot.com/2008/02/deferred-printing-in-latex.html
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
"That's pretty. Where's that?"
"It's the Age of Channelwood."
"We should go there on vacation some time."
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Darren New wrote:
> One example of why LaTeX is better than WYSIWYG.
...so LaTeX is better than WYSIWYG for exactly the same reason that SDL
is "better" than a traditional modeller then? [i.e., you can easily
script in new behaviours to add features that aren't already there.]
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
> > One example of why LaTeX is better than WYSIWYG.
> ...so LaTeX is better than WYSIWYG for exactly the same reason that SDL
> is "better" than a traditional modeller then? [i.e., you can easily
> script in new behaviours to add features that aren't already there.]
I suppose that's basically it. LaTeX is a bit like a scriptable HTML on
steroids.
What I like about LaTeX, something which I can't find eg. in OpenOffice
Writer, is that it allows generating much nicer page layouts for many
things. For example, assume that you are writing tons of text with the
following format:
- Some key concept
Explanation text for the key
concept above.
- Another key concept
Explanation for this other key
concept.
etc.
You can create text like that just fine with OO Writer. Its problem is
that the layout becomes ugly when page breaks happen at inconvenient places.
More precisely, when this happens:
- Some key concept
<new page>
Explanation text for the key
concept above.
The "title" and its explanation end up in different pages, which is ugly.
It is possible in LaTeX to define special boxes where you can tie these
"titles" and their explanation texts together and specify some properties
for them. For example, "at least two lines of the explanation part must
be in the same page as the title, else put a page break before the title".
Not only that, if the condition is triggered and an "early page break"
is created, instead of leaving an ugly empty space at the end of the
previous page, LaTeX will just slightly increase the line spacing of that
previous page to fill up that empty space, making it look nicer.
LaTeX does this by default with chapter/section/subsection titles
(ie. it never happens that a subsection title ends up at the end of a
page, while the contents of the section begin at the next page), and
you can configure how it behaves. You can also create your own blocks
which behave in this same way.
Of course this doesn't mean that there aren't things which end up looking
a bit ugly in LaTeX or that there weren't things which are very difficult
or awkward to do, but I just wish eg. OO Writer had this type of feature.
--
- Warp
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> What I like about LaTeX, something which I can't find eg. in OpenOffice
> Writer, is that it allows generating much nicer page layouts for many
> things. For example, assume that you are writing tons of text with the
> following format:
>
> - Some key concept
> Explanation text for the key
> concept above.
>
> - Another key concept
> Explanation for this other key
> concept.
>
> etc.
>
> You can create text like that just fine with OO Writer. Its problem is
> that the layout becomes ugly when page breaks happen at inconvenient
> places.
FYI in MS Word this is easy to prevent, simply go into the style definition
for the key concept style and check the "keep with next" option in paragraph
settings. Maybe the same is in OO Writer somewhere?
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>> ...so LaTeX is better than WYSIWYG for exactly the same reason that SDL
>> is "better" than a traditional modeller then? [i.e., you can easily
>> script in new behaviours to add features that aren't already there.]
>
> I suppose that's basically it. LaTeX is a bit like a scriptable HTML on
> steroids.
Of course, what that also ends up meaning is that only one program can
understand it. (Only POV-Ray really understands SDL, and only TeX really
understands TeX files.) OTOH, HTML can be parsed and manipulated with
tools like XSLT by a miriad of programs... For example, Google can take
a HTML document and figure out what useful content is in it in order to
index it, traverse linkes, etc.
> What I like about LaTeX, something which I can't find eg. in OpenOffice
> Writer, is that it allows generating much nicer page layouts for many
> things.
Indeed, TeX has a very nice formatting engine. I could go on for hours
about all the various features it offers and all the sophistication
involved, but the basic end result is that, without *doing* anything in
particular, you tend to more or less automatically end up with a pretty
good layout.
[Altough there are a few places where it routinely goes wrong. For
example, TeX really doesn't like narrow boxes very much...]
I am *told* that M$ Word has a feature ("orphan protection"?) that's
supposed to prevent a title and its body from being seperated. But
that's just one possible kind of undesirable seperation. And I suspect
you have to use styles correctly for it to even work properly anyway.
Which just brings us back to the fact that Word is fundamentally
designed to be a structureless WYSIWYG editor, whereas TeX and HTML are
both structural...
Other things I like about LaTeX are
- It typesets mathematical formulas. [I can hear your gasps of surprise...]
- The default typeface is delicious.
- The end result just looks more "formal" and arguably "professional"
than something thrown together with Word [yet takes about the same
amount of effort].
(Of course, it only looks professional until you notice that you just
spelled "funtcion" wrong... And since only TeX can read TeX, good luck
trying to spell-check your work!)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> Darren New wrote:
>> One example of why LaTeX is better than WYSIWYG.
>
> ...so LaTeX is better than WYSIWYG for exactly the same reason that SDL
> is "better" than a traditional modeller then? [i.e., you can easily
> script in new behaviours to add features that aren't already there.]
>
Correct.
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This is about the 8th time *this month* that somebody has agreed with
me... holy crap, I'M ON A ROLL!!!
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Of course, what that also ends up meaning is that only one program can
> understand it.
Basically only MS Word understands .doc files. Your point? ;)
> OTOH, HTML can be parsed and manipulated with
> tools like XSLT by a miriad of programs...
OTOH, HTML sucks for creating publications with good layout.
> - The end result just looks more "formal" and arguably "professional"
> than something thrown together with Word [yet takes about the same
> amount of effort].
LaTeX creates superb scientifical papers by default. OTOH it's not so
well suitable for other types of publications, for which MS Word may have
ready templates. (I have a concrete example in mind, but it's quite
impossible to find such an example with google. Google only understands
words, not layout formatting... :P )
--
- Warp
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>> Of course, what that also ends up meaning is that only one program can
>> understand it.
>
> Basically only MS Word understands .doc files. Your point? ;)
There are lots of converters between different 3D file formats - but few
for SDL. This is obviously partly because SDL can describe things that
aren't polygons - but it's also got a lot to do with SDL being scriptable.
I guess if you could split SDL into a scene *description* language and a
scene *construction* language, at least the description part should be
pretty portable. (And if you made it an XML application... OK, I'm
kidding!!)
You have a kind of similar thing with XSLT. With XSLT, you can take a
hand-written document and transform it into something more elaborate by
a sequence of fairly arbitrary transformations, resulting in a new document.
[I think that's the difference really. When you "run" an SDL script, you
don't end up with a new, finished, description. It exists only
temporarily while the scene renders. Mind you, in many cases it would be
*huge*...]
>> OTOH, HTML can be parsed and manipulated with
>> tools like XSLT by a miriad of programs...
>
> OTOH, HTML sucks for creating publications with good layout.
Well, HTML itself doesn't [or shouldn't] do layout. That's what CSS is
for. And either way, the technology is definitely *not* designed for
paper. It's designed to look good on a computer screen. Hence a while
different set of design decisions...
>> - The end result just looks more "formal" and arguably "professional"
>> than something thrown together with Word [yet takes about the same
>> amount of effort].
>
> LaTeX creates superb scientifical papers by default. OTOH it's not so
> well suitable for other types of publications, for which MS Word may have
> ready templates.
You're probably right about that.
In fact, trying to write my CV with LaTeX proved more or less
impossible. LaTeX is trying to do all this cleaver automatic layout for
me, and I'm trying to control it and make it put elements in specific
places so it fits on one page... I ended up using OO instead.
Similarly, if you wanted to put together something like an advert or
poster, TeX would be a very bad choice. It's really designed for writing
long documents, not 1-page custom-layout things like that.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
> This is about the 8th time *this month* that somebody has agreed with
> me... holy crap, I'M ON A ROLL!!!
>
No, You're not :-)
John
--
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.
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