Laser
I guess that’s where the advantages come into play the most. I only use it for a handful of machines (2 notebooks, one workstation, an SBC and 2 VPSs) and it’s still a great solution, though there is quite the overhead for the first setup.
Anyhow, that doesn’t mean that it’s more work in total than other distributions. The module system catches a lot of configuration errors for you which means you basically never and up with a “broken” configuration, and even if you did, you could select an older generation (more correct way to say rolling back on NixOS). Sure, the configuration might not do want you intended, but it will most likely be functional.
This even goes so far that some modules detect common configuration pitfalls for applications, like headers not being inherited because they got redefined.
Currently working in LaTeX for work.
I don’t think you really need looseness (I assume you want to avoid single lines?), you can rather increase the badness of them so that they’re avoided through other means.
Manual line breaks I only use in tables (thanks tabularray author). In text, I don’t think I have any.
Negative vspace I also don’t have, what’s your use case? I can imagine it for very specific tasks (a special page like a title page it something similar where everything is set very precisely) but for normal writing, I didn’t encounter it.
All in all, I think LaTeX shows its age, but the huge ecosystem is the main reason it’s still a good choice despite a little of shortcomings like the arcane macro system, features that are seemingly impossible to implement like accessibility (
(but it’s still leagues ahead of word)
My current document approached 50 pages with about 10 tables, 3 figures (tikz) and 10 bibliography entries and it’s perfectly handleable. Just informing having to do that with word gives me agony. I worked on the same type of document in word that was kind of an earlier draft by someone else and stuff broke left and right, and that was without the more complex formatting that I later employed.
As someone else answered, I’m also looking forward to typst. Unfortunately, PDFs generated by it are currently much larger than through LaTeX (https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/895, fix currently not in any stable version) and package import is a preview. Some features aren’t implemented yet but would be really nice, the syntax seems really sane and it’s fast, so I’m optimistic it can become a strong contender.
Ah, I see. Makes sense. I have seen some horrible LaTeX code at uni where someone didn’t follow your simple rule:
let LaTeX do it’s job.
The decision LaTeX makes are often very good, and the problem is often that what one thinks is better comes with even bigger downsides.
Now, once we get into tables… Ugh
Is it though? Normally it’s ironic: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/stop-doing-math
German here with similar laws to yours, though wine and beer legal with 16: legal age of 21 is in line with experts’ recommendations regarding brain development, however it’s questionable if this approach achieves the goal. If you want to discourage teenage drinking, make it unappealing, not illegal; but then we might have to acknowledge that we have an industry that heavily profits from a risky substance that puts a huge burden on society (several billion in damages each year) and we might have to regulate some aspects instead of just blaming the unfortunate people who got screwed over.
First off, Candeath Omens can go fuck herself.
I do think however that there is a weird technology faith in that people believe technology will fix all issues long term or improve or all aspects of our lives. Like when people say AI will fix global warming / climate change… dude, it can’t even properly take orders at a McDonald’s, which is traditionally one of the least qualified jobs. And if you ask an AI how to stop it, it’ll just tell you what we already know, which people haven’t been doing for years. Because that’s what am AI does.
It’s mostly the people neither actually engineering the technology nor studying the actual issue that believe this. But it’s a huge driver in the discussion.
