this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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Science Memes

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Two chemists walk into a bar (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] Opisek 26 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Now all I want is inline TeX.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I do quite like how clear TeX is. The curly braces make it completely unambiguous how everything is supposed to be parsed, which means even though it's a little more awkward to write, it's still a lot easier to write if your comments are getting more complicated. Plus it's so much easier for the parsing libraries to get right.

[–] Opisek 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I just love how universal it is. Sure, it has its flaws, but its strength is how many different applications use it. Once you know how to write TeX, you can express any equation you want clearly and understandably, as opposed to trying to write it with Unicode. Bonus points for how easy it is to add TeX rendering to the web with libraries like KaTeX (my personal favourite) or MathJax. I was able to add TeX support to my blog in 10 minutes.

I'm a bit of a sucker for TeX as might be apparent from my infodumping. If anyone's as passionate and doesn't know of it yet: You should try the https://texnique.xyz game. It's a timed TeX typing game. I can get up to 70-80 points in it fairly consistently :D

[–] marcos 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I just love how universal it is.

Lol!

Half of the stuff people expect to work is library code that isn't even bundled at the default TeX context. Most of the symbols don't even come packaged with the TeX interpreter.

Somebody should really make a "standard TeX" and LaTeX should adopt it.

[–] Opisek 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yes, universal. Many websites, apps, communicators etc. implement a flavour of TeX. They will differ in some more complex features or commands, but your $a^2+b^2=c^2$ will work. And that's the point. For most times, you'll just want to communicate some simple concepts.

We could do better, for sure. For example, there's been some development around Typst, which tries to resolve many of those quirks, annoyances, and inconsistencies that come with TeX. It makes sense, since TeX evolved rather naturally and outgrew what it was initially comprised to be. While I'd love to see Typst come far, for now TeX is something that I take for granted, which perhaps better encompasses my thoughts than the word "universal".