What the OP describes is really long, drawn out, complicated mud wrestling.
I've been a good TeX user from the beginning of TeX and love TeX.
For the problem the OP addresses with LaTeX, there is a much easier solution: And the candidates are ..., and may I have the envelope, please? [drum roll].
And the winner is ["rip"]: Just use just TeX, that is, D. Knuth's TeX with his standard macro collection Plain. If get into trouble, then just get and read his book, The TeXBook -- as software documentation, it is exemplary.
I'm guessing that a TeX file sent to people who accept LaTeX will work fine. That was the case the time I published in the Elsevier journal Information Sciences.
Want some cross reference macros? Okay, I put my TeX macro source code for cross references at
in two parts in two posts where the
above URL is for the first part and
the second part is close in the
same HN thread.
The OP goes on and on about what
text editor to use for typing in
documents in TeX. No problemo!
I just use my favorite general purpose
text editor KEdit with a few macros
specific to TeX.
With the TeX distribution I have is
the spell checker ASpell. I use it
for nearly all my spell checking, in
blog posts, e-mail, sure, TeX,
source code documentation,
own notes on random subjects, etc.
ASpell was written by a bright,
hard working person -- it's darned
nice software, one of my favorite
tools. I use ASpell just for
English, but IIRC it also can
work with French, German, etc.
TeX is fixed and unchanging,
rock solidly standard, essentially
totally bug free, beautifully designed
and documented -- what's not to like?
LaTeX? Just to start, need at least two
books, each about twice the size of
Knuth's one book, and IMHO nowhere
nearly as well written
(likely the case since next to nothing
in software or computer science
is written as well as Knuth's book).
For more, of course there is the
TeX source code documentation
in Knuth's literate programming
which I've long regarded as
just exemplary software
development -- that is, IMHO
the most important part of software
is the documentation, clear enough
to make the actual programming
language statements obvious because
otherwise when the code is written
"only the programmer and God
understand it and six months later,
only God".
TeX was good enough for Knuth's book
and, then, his series The Art of Computer
Programming and, thus, should be
up to the needs of a journal.
Or, in short, just use TeX, with
your favorite editor (hopefully
a good one that lets you write
some macros), write some
TeX macros, use ASpell, and
otherwise avoid the mud
wrestling and relax!
TeX is essentially a programming language for typesetting. I sigh when I think of learning a new language for such a narrow purpose. You make this sound easy but I have Knuth's book and have seen enough of it to know this isn't easy. If it were, no one would have been motivated to write or use LaTeX in the first place.
> TeX is essentially a programming
language for typesetting. I sigh when I
think of learning a new language for such
a narrow purpose.
Yup, and "sigh" is a mild version.
I don't remember saying that TeX was
"easy".
Actually, for just text, TeX can be quite
easy, as easy as, say, HTML, old WordStar, Word, the old Runoff programs, etc. That is,
just need to know a few tags.
The difficult parts are doing more, lots more,
especially typesetting some mathematics
with some tricky notation. It's
fair to say that, just due to mathematics
and its notation, fundamentally there is
no "royal road" to typesetting all of
mathematics -- much of it, yes, all of it,
no.
I confess I spent a lot of time in Knuth's
book. At one point I wrote a verbatim
macro and like it better than what Knuth
has -- verbatim is tricky because need to
cancel temporarily a lot of what is in
TeX. I wrote the macro so that I could
document with the source code TeX macros
in TeX documents. At the time, that
seemed important -- I no longer believe it
is.
Also I wanted to use TeX as the formatting language for my old daisy wheel printer, say, instead of old PC
WordStar or some such. At the time, that
seemed important. Nope, it wasn't.
But for business cards? Yup, TeX has been
nice. Can get some sheets to run through a black and white laser printer. The TeX is cute, say, have the TeX for one business card and, then, use more TeX tricks to position the results for one card on all the cards on one sheet. Then bend
the sheets and get a stack of cards -- they look good enough (somehow the edges
are clean enough).
But I've got the macro; writing it is
a good TeX exercise.
Maybe have to look at TeX in about the
right way. Or, from a movie, "I'll love it
when it works." with the response "It will work when you love it." Or, love it for what it is good for; don't hate it for what it's not good for. TeX is not good for
everything.
What is TeX good for? Sure, Knuth's books in his series The Art of Computer Programming (TACP) and, okay, also papers in, say, the American Mathematical Society (AMS) journals.
Or, TeX is to do on a computer what
typesetters used to do by hand for math text, many physics and engineering texts,
TACP, and the AMS. So, right, TeX is not
the ultimate way to put any and all marks in color, etc. on paper or a screen now and in the future. For the future, really, TeX was to computerize the old work of
math typesetting, not create a new future in formatting or putting wildly conceived marketing materials on billboards, handbills, TV, or computer screens. E.g., I don't see an easy way in TeX to wrap multicolored, stretched text around a sphere and have it rotating with sparks flying off -- maybe Knuth could use TeX for that! I see no way to do ray tracing graphics in TeX. TeX doesn't replace everything from Adobe or HTML5 or be the sole tool of all graphic artists, movie makers, etc.
But if you want to be able to type math,
and I do, then TeX is just fantastic -- beautiful results and, for such good results, by far the easiest approach.
If look at Knuth's book and insist on just
an introductory tutorial for an hour or so
and just f'get about the rest, then you
should do okay at first. As you want
more, say, ordered lists, unordered lists,
simple lists (I have some simple macros for each of those three, with the logic for some nesting), good control over page
breaks, exact control on space
after periods, positioning of figures, using TeX
to put math annotation on a figure
(basically have TeX print on top of the
figure -- actually easy enough once see how it works), some
fancy foils format, essentially automatic tables of contents,
cross references, a nice way to do
references (I have a good enough way but
don't use BibTeX), getting good with font
magnification, handling hyphenation in
detail yourself, tricky tables (they are
not so easy in HTML, either -- about the
only easy way to do tables is with just
flat ASCII and assuming a monospaced
font!), then look some things up in The
TexBook.
I believe you will find that the simple
stuff can still be simple. And for the
math, say, at the level of freshman
calculus, that's actually quite natural
and easy also.
IMHO, LaTeX is more difficult. Maybe
LaTeX makes it easier to have some book
format with title page, frontispiece,
preface, table of contents, fronts matter,
body, parts, chapters, sections,
subsections, back matter, tricky running headers and footers, references,
colophon, etc., but, gee, Knuth wrote his
book in TeX and not everyone is trying to
write the Encyclopedia Britannica.
If something seems really challenging in TeX, then maybe don't really need to do that. Or get some help from the
KISS princple -- Keep it Simple Sam.
E.g., for KISS, consider HN: How can post pictures? Can't do that. How can include TeX math? Nope, not there. How about bold face? Can't do that either. How about ordered lists nicely indented? Not there. Still HN
is darned useful.
I've been a good TeX user from the beginning of TeX and love TeX.
For the problem the OP addresses with LaTeX, there is a much easier solution: And the candidates are ..., and may I have the envelope, please? [drum roll]. And the winner is ["rip"]: Just use just TeX, that is, D. Knuth's TeX with his standard macro collection Plain. If get into trouble, then just get and read his book, The TeXBook -- as software documentation, it is exemplary.
I'm guessing that a TeX file sent to people who accept LaTeX will work fine. That was the case the time I published in the Elsevier journal Information Sciences.
Want some cross reference macros? Okay, I put my TeX macro source code for cross references at
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13630570
in two parts in two posts where the above URL is for the first part and the second part is close in the same HN thread.
The OP goes on and on about what text editor to use for typing in documents in TeX. No problemo! I just use my favorite general purpose text editor KEdit with a few macros specific to TeX.
With the TeX distribution I have is the spell checker ASpell. I use it for nearly all my spell checking, in blog posts, e-mail, sure, TeX, source code documentation, own notes on random subjects, etc. ASpell was written by a bright, hard working person -- it's darned nice software, one of my favorite tools. I use ASpell just for English, but IIRC it also can work with French, German, etc.
TeX is fixed and unchanging, rock solidly standard, essentially totally bug free, beautifully designed and documented -- what's not to like?
LaTeX? Just to start, need at least two books, each about twice the size of Knuth's one book, and IMHO nowhere nearly as well written (likely the case since next to nothing in software or computer science is written as well as Knuth's book). For more, of course there is the TeX source code documentation in Knuth's literate programming which I've long regarded as just exemplary software development -- that is, IMHO the most important part of software is the documentation, clear enough to make the actual programming language statements obvious because otherwise when the code is written "only the programmer and God understand it and six months later, only God".
TeX was good enough for Knuth's book and, then, his series The Art of Computer Programming and, thus, should be up to the needs of a journal.
Or, in short, just use TeX, with your favorite editor (hopefully a good one that lets you write some macros), write some TeX macros, use ASpell, and otherwise avoid the mud wrestling and relax!