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Storing text in binary formats like word docs instead of plain text like latex makes git version control unusable.
I’ve been questioning the benefits every time someone insisted that I should use latex. Now I have scientific evidence that it won’t make my life better!
Use latex. It will make your life better.
Well, latex users reported enjoying the software, so I will give you that credit.
“¿Por qué no los dos?”
I write my text in a word processor (Like Libreoffice writer) and typeset the final document in LaTeX.
I never understood this false comparison between the two software that are essentially meant for very distinct tasks.
Thanks Satan !
Typst >>>>>.
But still, Word sucks ass.
This is an outrage! 🧐
sample size seems small but im no expert
/begin{outrage}
How dare they!?
/end{outrage}
latex exists to make your text look more professional, not to make you more productive, duh.
pig lipstick
Just write everything in markdown and use pandoc to type set.
That is what Obsidian is for.
.md .tex .md
needs more jpeg.
but on a serious note, how do you version control an msoffice/libreoffice document? you can’t just put it in git, the repo will get huge quickly
docx is just a zip of xml files. if you add some hooks to git, you could make it unzip it, commit the xml files, then when checking out rezip it into a docx automatically.
Thanks, I hate it
git hooks! Totally forgot it, that sounds interesting
Now judge it by how good the end result looks
But also… The fuck?
Clearly flawed methodology.
The value of LaTeX isn’t productivity when making a single document.
The value of LaTeX is productivity when you need to reuse past work, or update it with the latest data and figures, or make a collection of similar documents.
Exactly. Give them a bunch of setup, let them set it up as normal.
Then tell everyone to resize the second pictures and move all images from the side of the page to the right. Then see who does it first.
And the ease with which you can generate hundreds of lines of page with a simple text template and code.
Right.
Do your writing in text files accompanying the image files (figures). The LaTeX code is just instructions for how to render the various text sources arrange the figures on pages to be printed or rendered as slides.
It separates the flowing creative experience of writing and documenting what happened in the experiment from the fiddling creative experience of rendering, editing, and presentation to ensure that the text and figures line up appropriately and are on appropriate pages.
Separating fact finding from presentation is an important barrier in the scientific method.
Yup. When I rerun my things, in latex I just overwrite the plots file (pdf/png) and compile latex. In word I have to find where it was and replace it there. It’s way easier on latex if you make your code just write plot files in the same location.
You can use a symlink to point to the
figuresdirectory of a certain run of the code. Add git history to the mix, and now you have an auditable record of what version of the code’s output ended up in each version of the paper.You can be so anal and precise about everything.
Yup simlink is so nice. I sometimes use it for color vs monocrome plots. Change simlink and compile. Although I learned you can also use if statements in latex, I use that now.
Well, duh, I obviously learned LaTeX only to be less productive and procrastinate more. And when I was getting somewhere with it, I had to switch to RMarkdown instead to be able to procrastinate even more! Imagine actually having to think about the content of your work, ugh :/
I’m imagining what it would be like to write a page long {align} in word and it’s terrifying.
I’ve wasted hours of my life, trying to insert an image in a word document without word compressing it, making it illegible, only to find out that it’s impossible. I can’t even imagine anything being worse at this point
Sure, but have you ever wasted hours of your life checking the documentation for the exact string of case-sensitive letters that force LaTeX not to yeet your image 45 pages further into the document, because that’s THE MOST PERFECT PLACE to put it?
I never get these comments… I never had these problems in Word and I’m using Office since Office 2003. However what I did repeatedly see are users who, although Office has many possible workflows chose the most complex one and were then too stubborn to change
