[HN Gopher] The highly involved build process for my doctoral di...
___________________________________________________________________
The highly involved build process for my doctoral dissertation
Author : pabs3
Score : 37 points
Date : 2023-12-08 09:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spwhitton.name)
(TXT) w3m dump (spwhitton.name)
| applied_heat wrote:
| Does anyone know any library that can swap a page in the pdf with
| another without destroying the metadata?
| analog31 wrote:
| I use a Python library called pdfrw to take PDFs apart, notably
| to work with sheet music. I think when you ask it for a page,
| it returns the whole thing, and the PDF files that get written
| are still readable PDFs.
|
| I assume that within the file structure are things that enable
| an internal integrity check, such as maybe checksums or CRC's,
| which would necessarily be different if the file contents are
| different.
| cozzyd wrote:
| qpdf?
| clankyclanker wrote:
| pdftk?
| agarsev wrote:
| You can dump the metadata and then restore it, maybe that'll
| work for you?
| cozzyd wrote:
| I too had a complicated Makefile for my dissertation, but since
| then I've learned to use latexmk which seems to more or less do
| everything for you...
|
| (ok, I guess I still often have a Makefile that calls latexmk and
| sometimes produces some figures from scripts)
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| I've known PhDs in philosophy who can barely create slides in
| power point... while others (like OP) go and use latex, create
| open source software and use emacs. I've never seen such a
| drastic difference in any other field.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Latex is the norm in all natural sciences and engineering
| fields. Most people however are happy with putting their
| content in someone else's templates.
| jacurtis wrote:
| I'm not sure how its possible to get a PhD in the modern era
| without learning LaTex. It is the required markup and
| publishing tool for any respected research publication. Since
| PhDs require (at least mine did) multiple published works in
| respected journals and conferences, I feel like LaTex is table-
| stakes for doctoral research and degrees.
|
| Furthermore, outside of my dissertation work, the classes I
| took often required you to produce other research works which
| also had to be created with LaTex. Overleaf (a SaaS platform
| for Latex collaboration and sharing) was essentially the
| operating system of my PhD. I spent 75% of my time in there.
|
| I feel like it would be impossible to get a Doctoral degree
| without LaTex knowledge. Maybe it depends on the university?
| rnadomvirlabe wrote:
| Microsoft Word still reigns supreme in many fields. Some
| journals still require it as the format for submission.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| Yeah, my experience is that philosophy journals typically
| expect word documents.
| svara wrote:
| This is all completely untrue in general. There are many
| fields in which you'll be the annoying weirdo who tries to
| force their tools on others if you insist on using latex.
|
| For example, Nature is so kind as to accept final submissions
| in latex, but they'll convert it to Word. So it's completely
| pointless.
|
| Frankly people using latex-beamer make me roll my eyes too.
| It's a sign you care about tools more than outcome. If you're
| making a presentation, your goal should be to produce the
| ideal design to convey your message to the audience. Latex
| always gets in the way of this. (Some latex wizards are going
| to disagree obviously, but for the vast majority of users
| it's true.)
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > Frankly people using latex-beamer make me roll my eyes
| too. It's a sign you care about tools more than outcome. If
| you're making a presentation, your goal should be to
| produce the ideal design to convey your message to the
| audience. Latex always gets in the way of this. (Some latex
| wizards are going to disagree obviously, but for the vast
| majority of users it's true.)
|
| It's a sign that I care about outcome and efficiency. I
| want the minimum effort on my part to have the maximum
| clarity and impact. Beamer is that tool.
|
| I do roughly zero formatting, and in exchange I get
| something that looks good, is very clear and simple for the
| audience to understand, and has impact.
|
| The beauty of LaTeX is that it gets out of the way. I don't
| need to think about formatting, I can think about content.
| rsa4046 wrote:
| > For example, Nature is so kind as to accept final
| submissions in latex, but they'll convert it to Word. So
| it's completely pointless.
|
| There is large gulf between submitting a paper (typically
| limited to a few journal pages) to a well-equipped
| organization like Springer Nature, and submitting a
| manuscript hundreds of even thousands of pages in length to
| a university dissertation office, when that document must
| adhere scrupulously to various formatting requirements in
| terms of tables, figures, pagination, citation, appendices,
| cross-referencing, etc. Word is fine for memos, briefs,
| letters, and other fairly short documents. But its
| capabilities for creating complex documents that must
| include cross-referencing, strict placement of tables,
| figures, and other floats, citations, referencing, etc.
| frankly suck. Students can't afford expensive typesetting
| software: TeX and friends are high quality, stable, have a
| large and knowledgeable user community, and most
| importantly, are free. You can bet that publishing houses
| aren't using Word and PowerPoint to produce anything beyond
| email. They accept Word documents because of Microsoft's
| market dominance, which is unrelated to the quality of
| software they publish.
| shpongled wrote:
| Maybe in CS?
|
| In the life sciences, practically no one knows how to use
| LaTeX, or has even heard of it.
| amelius wrote:
| Latex coding is the favorite bike shedding project of many CS
| students.
| ezequiel-garzon wrote:
| On the technically advanced end of the spectrum you'll find
| John MacFarlane [1], professor of philosophy at Berkeley and
| creator of pandoc [2]. Some people are just amazing.
|
| [1] https://johnmacfarlane.net/
|
| [2] https://pandoc.org/
| slow_typist wrote:
| Incredibly talented guy. Incredibly useful software.
| nohuck13 wrote:
| "goals: ... replace the second page with a scanned copy ...after
| it was signed by the examiners... reproducibly."
|
| Oh man, purist side quests like this are exactly how I would
| procrastinate a philosophy dissertation. But building a complex
| process for _reproducibly_ handling the once-in-a-lifetime event
| of accepting your dissertation examiners' signatures is taking it
| to a whole other level.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| For my M.S. I just looked up the relevant PDF merge utility for
| Linux online. I can't even remember what it was now, but it
| took the first x pages from the unsigned thesis, intercollated
| the signed signing page, and then took the remaining pages from
| the unsigned thesis, and output a single PDF.
|
| Edit: .zsh_history had it:
|
| > pdftk A=thesis.pdf B=approval.pdf cat A1-5 B1 A7-end output
| signed_thesis.pdf
| lapcat wrote:
| What struck me was "Copyright (c) 2018-2023 Sean Whitton" on the
| dissertation. 5 years? Ugh.
|
| True story: While writing my philosophy dissertation, I dropped
| out of grad school to become a Mac developer, and a key factor
| was the open source Mac bibliography app BibDesk.
| https://bibdesk.sourceforge.io/
| dmd wrote:
| Five years seems pretty normal? Shorter than that would be
| extremely unusual. What are you saying here?
| lapcat wrote:
| I think you're confusing time spent in the doctoral program
| vs. time spent writing the doctoral dissertation?
|
| This appears to be your resume, according to which you spent
| five years total in the doctoral program. I'm pretty sure you
| didn't start writing your dissertation on day one, since
| there are years of coursework and other requirements before
| you start writing your dissertation.
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielmdrucker
| dmd wrote:
| Ok, yeah, that's true. I'd guess "started working on stuff
| that went into my thesis" to final product was about 3
| years.
|
| I actually remember the day I did "mkdir thesis" and then
| said "WELP that's enough work for today!"
| lapcat wrote:
| Looks like 10 years in the program for the author. There
| could have been a break before grad school, though he was
| a teaching assistant as early as 2016.
| https://spwhitton.name//philos/CV.pdf
|
| Ph.D. Philosophy, University of Arizona (expected 2023)
|
| MMathPhil, Mathematics and Philosophy, University of
| Oxford (2013)
| joosters wrote:
| IMO, LaTeX is just a way for computer scientists to keep on
| programming when they've finished their research project and are
| writing it up.
| ribit wrote:
| My dissertation building process was similar. Only it also
| involved a bunch of custom pandoc filters and the markdown had
| runnable R code in it. Fun times. I didn't bother with replacing
| the signed page though, because enough is enough.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-12-09 23:00 UTC)