[HN Gopher] Beautiful LaTeX Book with Examples
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Beautiful LaTeX Book with Examples
        
       Author : anmnv
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2023-09-30 14:25 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | joeman1000 wrote:
       | It is very ugly
        
       | huytersd wrote:
       | Is there any software that can take handwritten equations (say on
       | an ipad or ocr) and convert them to latex reliably because
       | there's no way I'm going to try and learn those incantations.
        
         | globular-toast wrote:
         | Why do you think there's no way? I never put any concerted
         | effort into learning TeX maths syntax but by the end of writing
         | my thesis it was as easy as writing it by hand. I would never
         | dream of scribbling maths into a computer. Complete waste of
         | time.
        
           | huytersd wrote:
           | Why? I've found writing directly to be the easiest way to
           | work on math and that's as a former programmer.
        
             | globular-toast wrote:
             | I work on maths using pencil and paper. I only use TeX for
             | typesetting. Only a tiny fraction of my scribbles would
             | ever get typeset, and it's usually going to be completely
             | rewritten in the process anyway. I recommend just learning
             | TeX for typesetting maths. It's simply the best tool.
        
         | tomjen3 wrote:
         | Thats probably something ChatGPT would be pretty good at.
        
         | anmnv wrote:
         | Snip,TeXpad,Ink to LaTeX, Mathpix, MyScript MathPad,... I used
         | Mathpix ones (3 years ago it wasn't really good ocr from
         | handwriting, but I have heard that they have made a lot of
         | improvements since this time). I tried some of them, and I hope
         | it will help.
        
       | Trumpi wrote:
       | Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
        
       | KennyBlanken wrote:
       | It's not "beautiful" (in fact, the author seems to have terrible
       | layout/style sense) and that github page is just...terrible. I'm
       | not sure why the author chose to embed 10 pages of PNGs on it.
       | 
       |  _But_
       | 
       | I think there's definitely a need for well-curated collections of
       | "common things people want or need to do documents"...like the
       | "draft" watermarking, confidential flag, QR codes, org
       | charts/family trees, and so on - especially if they are well-
       | commented.
       | 
       | I would love to see such a collection for doing various common
       | page layouts, and also for leveraging many of the features of
       | PDFs.
       | 
       | And no, the various sites that host lots of example LaTeX
       | documents don't feel like they are really a substitute. I've
       | found them poorly curated and as a LaTeX novice, it's difficult
       | to figure out how to extract the one thing the author of the
       | document is doing that you want to pull and replicate. So often,
       | I've tried to do so and ended up with incomprehensible 'compile'
       | errors.
       | 
       | Even after repeated attempts to learn LaTeX and do useful things
       | with it, I still find it almost impenetrable. Debugging is nearly
       | impossible because the "compiler" gives completely shit error
       | messages, and looking at LaTeX code as a beginner, I just see
       | meaningless ASCII vomit. LaTeX seems to use a ton of "this one
       | particular punctuation mark or letter tacked on to this command
       | or function means LaTeX will actually interpret that as..."
       | bullshit that makes the code impossible to read or understand.
       | 
       | I understand why that sort of shorthand was done given LaTeX was
       | written in the Every Byte Is Sacred Era - but some evolution of
       | LaTeX to be more parseable to the human eye/brain in the last
       | three decades would have been nice.
        
         | sombragris wrote:
         | As a 20+ years as a more or less casual LaTeX user, I feel your
         | pain. However, some points your mention have workarounds.
         | 
         | My first advice would be to invest in getting _The LaTeX
         | Companion_ (https://www.amazon.com/LaTeX-Companion-Techniques-
         | Computer-T...). Really, it is the "common things people want or
         | need to do documents" as you said.
         | 
         | The third edition is just out of the presses. I have the 2nd
         | one, and one of the appendixes is an explanation of LaTeX and
         | TeX infamously cryptic error messages, and it is really useful.
         | 
         | As for using PDF features, try PDFLaTeX or even better, XeLaTeX
         | or luatex. The latter use utf-8 and advanced PDF kerning
         | techniques, among other useful stuff.
        
       | g8oz wrote:
       | Now that Typst exists is pure LaTeX necessary anymore?
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-09-30 23:01 UTC)