Stop using LaTeX!

[Tuxman]

Just a random article, preparing for one more software from me (you'll never guess what it is!):

What I call the ‘LaTeX fetish’ is the conviction that there is something about LaTeX that makes it good for writing in. As we shall see, arguments in favour of writing in LaTeX are unpersuasive on a rational level: LaTeX is in fact quite bad for writing in (although it could be worse, i.e. it could be TeX). This doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t use LaTeX at all, but it does mean that people probably ought to stop recommending it as a writing tool.

http://www.danielall...09/the-latex-fetish/

[BGM]

I don't know about using LaTeX for writing, but one really good thing you can do with it is to rotate a pdf by X degrees:

[Select]

%Rotate a pdf file by any degree
%Works on every page of a multi-page pdf file
%You can't even buy software that will do this!
%http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/233513/how-to-rotate-a-pdf
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pdfpages}

\begin{document}
  \includepdf[pages={-},angle=0.7]{yourPDFfile.pdf}
\end{document}

This is something you can't do in nearly any pdf editor.  I've used this little script to rotate a pdf by 7 degrees before.

[Tuxman]

How often do you need to do that?

I mean, it can be handy, but there is the fine line between writing and typesetting again.

[BGM]

Well, I've only ever done it once.

I use InDesign for typesetting, anyway.  I never could get used to a "writing only" area.  For me, writing and it's display seem to go hand-in-hand.  I've never used LaTex for typesetting; I was just adding my two cents for LaTex.  I use it only for outputting Gregorian Chant via Gregorio.

[Arizona Hot]

LibreOfffce Writer is mentioned in the article. I used to use Scribus for such purposes. Now I use LibreOffice Writer to produce desktop publishing-ready PDFs. It's very easy to use, allows you to flow text around pictures and if you use the "Hybrid PDF" option (see screenshot below) you can re-edit the pdf later in LibreOffice Writer.

Stop using LaTeX!

[Tuxman]

I found LibreOffice to be surprisingly unreliable on Windows when I tried it last. Maybe that's a platform thing or directly related to my computer. Modern DTP (Scribus) is one of the less horrible alternatives to LaTeX indeed, although it's arguably not really a writing tool either.

[f0dder]

LibreOfffce Writer is mentioned in the article. I used to use Scribus for such purposes. Now I use LibreOffice Writer to produce desktop publishing-ready PDFs.

-Arizona Hot (July 19, 2019, 07:52 PM)

Hrm, I don't find that Libreoffice output quality comes anywhere near LaTeX.
It's OK if you just need to do typical office or school work, but publish-ready quality? Nope.

It's very easy to use, allows you to flow text around pictures and if you use the "Hybrid PDF" option (see screenshot below) you can re-edit the pdf later in LibreOffice Writer.

-Arizona Hot (July 19, 2019, 07:52 PM)

Why would you do that?
PDF should be thought of as an export, read-only format. Keep your documents in source form for editing!

[wraith808]

PDF should be thought of as an export, read-only format. Keep your documents in source form for editing!

-f0dder (July 20, 2019, 09:54 AM)

QFT!  I've seen too many projects unable to update because they assumed that the PDF would be good enough for source.  Or they have cost overruns because of the effort involved.