Any LateX users here?

Randorama · Post by **Randorama** » Thu May 25, 2006 4:01 pm

In case you're looking for a fetish/BDSM thread, i apologize, as i'd like to talk about the nifty program used to compile scientific documents (but other documents as well, if you want to). Are there any users who'd like to exchange tips and tricks? I admit that i'm dodging eventual dedicated fora for said program, as i have a certain allergy to a very high level of geekness...

Post by **Icarus** » Thu May 25, 2006 4:13 pm

Randorama wrote:I admit that i'm dodging eventual dedicated fora for said program, as i have a certain allergy to a very high level of geekness...

... says the walking strategy guide ^_-

Davey · Post by **Davey** » Thu May 25, 2006 4:57 pm

Randorama wrote:I admit that i'm dodging eventual dedicated fora for said program, as i have a certain allergy to a very high level of geekness...

And yet you came here.

magnum opus · Post by **magnum opus** » Thu May 25, 2006 5:08 pm

use it.
nothing really to share about it though

Eps · Post by **Eps** » Thu May 25, 2006 6:12 pm

AAAAH GOD NO!!! LaTeX IS THE DEVIL

I'm afraid I take the pussy route of MS Word (and Equation Editor) followed by conversion to PDF. And stay very, very far away indeed from LaTeX.

Diabollokus · Post by **Diabollokus** » Thu May 25, 2006 8:00 pm

Yeah, try switching to durex, if your alergic to it

TalkingOctopus · Post by **TalkingOctopus** » Fri May 26, 2006 1:52 am

I use it. I find document creation to be really painful, but I admit the final result looks very nice. I don't really have any great tips, but I was wondering if anyone knew of a good way to insert images and tables? The way I know is tedious.

Post by **Dave_K.** » Fri May 26, 2006 4:13 am

I recently installed LyX on my windows machine (http://www.lyx.org). The install took a long time, and some of the templates don't load correctly, but it seems to do the job admirably for a LateX newbie like myself.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Fri May 26, 2006 12:55 pm

Tried it and decided to stick with OpenOffice, which is easier to handle and also FREE. Why anyone is still using Mirco$oft Office is beyond me, though...

To be honest, it isn't. To quote Homer Simpson "It's because they're stupid. That's why everyone does everything."

landshark · Post by **landshark** » Fri May 26, 2006 3:22 pm

I used LyX through college.

Eps · Post by **Eps** » Fri May 26, 2006 5:39 pm

Ceph wrote:Tried it and decided to stick with OpenOffice, which is easier to handle and also FREE. Why anyone is still using Mirco$oft Office is beyond me, though...

To be honest, it isn't. To quote Homer Simpson "It's because they're stupid. That's why everyone does everything."

No, it's because I have tried OpenOffice and found to my surprise that I prefer Microsoft's offering.

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Fri May 26, 2006 7:45 pm

Ceph wrote:Tried it and decided to stick with OpenOffice, which is easier to handle and also FREE. Why anyone is still using Mirco$oft Office is beyond me, though...

To be honest, it isn't. To quote Homer Simpson "It's because they're stupid. That's why everyone does everything."

Dunno if you've used it for anything other than word processing, but it sorta sucks, at least as far as the excel equivalent goes. Did badly on some math projects last year thanks to not being able to do some parts of them (stuff OO couldn't handle) and not having the money for MS Office.

You get what you pay for.

but yeah, OMG I'm a BLIND SHEEP I should OPEN MY EYES etc.

Randorama · Post by **Randorama** » Fri May 26, 2006 9:43 pm

Yeah, i have surprised that in a forum of nerds CS geeks, i am the only one using LateX, honestly. I think that i'm automatically the alpha geek, i suppose... (Note: can you talk somewhere else about Microsoft products? Thanks in advance!).

LyX and LateX users: what are you currently using to draw l33t pictures? For the moment, i'm saving my butt by using qtree.sty regarding tree diagrams, but i wanted to implement the less painful solution around for eventual graphics and other nice effects. Any suggestions?

magnum opus · Post by **magnum opus** » Fri May 26, 2006 10:16 pm

Randorama wrote:Yeah, i have surprised that in a forum of nerds CS geeks, i am the only one using LateX

thats cause cs nerds don't use latex all that much it's used by scientists and people who have to crank out research papers for a living

Eps · Post by **Eps** » Fri May 26, 2006 10:29 pm

magnum opus wrote:
Randorama wrote:Yeah, i have surprised that in a forum of nerds CS geeks, i am the only one using LateX
thats cause cs nerds don't use latex all that much it's used by scientists and people who have to crank out research papers for a living

Plus, it's gradually being replaced by WYSIWYG scientific/mathematical notation environments; LaTeX comes from a time when such features were not commonly available. Most physicists in my department no longer use LaTeX much, if at all.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Fri May 26, 2006 11:10 pm

Ceph wrote:To be honest, it isn't. To quote Homer Simpson "It's because they're stupid. That's why everyone does everything."

that is why you invest in shrink wrapped video games that you never play

magnum opus · Post by **magnum opus** » Fri May 26, 2006 11:42 pm

Eps wrote: Plus, it's gradually being replaced by WYSIWYG scientific/mathematical notation environments; LaTeX comes from a time when such features were not commonly available. Most physicists in my department no longer use LaTeX much, if at all.

Seriously?
man every one here (NMT) uses LaTeX, nobody has anything more wysiwyg than vi. even the students tend to use it when they're doing anything more formal than a sophomore lab write up

although personally i'm a fan of abiword/gnumeric for windows and Koffice when i'm on linux, it does really good formating for pictures/tables and it can export to LaTeX.

Eps · Post by **Eps** » Sat May 27, 2006 12:53 am

magnum opus wrote:Seriously?
man every one here (NMT) uses LaTeX, nobody has anything more wysiwyg than vi. even the students tend to use it when they're doing anything more formal than a sophomore lab write up

To be honest, I think there is an element of set-in-their-ways old-fashionedness in the extensive use of LaTeX in many departments. This section of the LaTeX Wikipedia article sums it up nicely:

Wikipedia wrote:The popularity of LaTeX in the technical and academic communities is perhaps partly due to its early availability on Unix systems, and the comparative unavailability of competing word processors on those platforms until recently.

Replace 'partly' with 'almost totally', and you have my take on the issue. I am a regular *nix user, but I prefer to look at what is the best tool for a given job in the here and now, as opposed to using something just because it's 'zomg super l33t unix text only!11!'

Hence, I prefer WYSIWYG environments; the argument or implication that separating content from layout somehow makes it possible to write better content is in my opinion a fallacy. I am capable of using LaTeX, and it's not too hard to learn, but I find it to be inferior to the WYSIWYG approach. Right, I'm done.

landshark · Post by **landshark** » Sat May 27, 2006 1:14 am

Randorama wrote: LyX and LateX users: what are you currently using to draw l33t pictures? For the moment, i'm saving my butt by using qtree.sty regarding tree diagrams, but i wanted to implement the less painful solution around for eventual graphics and other nice effects. Any suggestions?

At the time, I used xfig. There are archives of stencils and such out there so you could make pretty much anything you want and export to EPS.

magnum opus · Post by **magnum opus** » Sat May 27, 2006 1:19 am

nah i wasn't tryin to defend it or anything i'm just really suprised most of your department doesn't use it is all, are they all younger or do you have a pretty minimal l*nix presence or what?

Eps · Post by **Eps** » Sat May 27, 2006 3:26 pm

magnum opus wrote:nah i wasn't tryin to defend it or anything i'm just really suprised most of your department doesn't use it is all, are they all younger or do you have a pretty minimal l*nix presence or what?

Kind of a mix of ages, and we have a fairly significant *nix presence due to the computational physics theory work that's done. Also, the use of LaTeX as opposed to WYSIWYG methods, from what I can tell, seems to be a bit more common in North America than it is in the UK (though a lot of people here do use it).

shmups.system11.org

Any LateX users here?

Any LateX users here?

Re: Any LateX users here?

Re: Any LateX users here?