this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2024
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Funny: Home of the Haha

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491
Expectations differ from results (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 months ago (4 children)

FYI don’t use empty lines as spacing. Instead use breaks.

Insert > Page Break (for quick and easy breaks that start on then next page)

Or…if you need something more specific

Layout > Breaks >

Text Wrapping (to make sure things like captions, etc move below an embedded object like a picture, table, etc)

Section Break (for the same layout/flow but potentially different styles, numbers/bullet lists reset, etc)

Column Break (if you’re doing multi column layout and you want the next thing to be at the top of the next column)

There are others

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ctrl+Enter for page break

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

So useful that it’s one of the breaks with an easy shortcut key

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Yup, them's the breaks.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Ok now do one for confluence pages.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Tables if you want very specific layouts for lots of discrete items.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Don't use a document editor for page layout.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

This is the way. Don’t let Word confuse you into believing it’s a DTP program.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago

exhale

ctrl z

"fuck"

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Do you have a minute to talk about our lord and savior LaTeX?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

LaTeX and the wonderful world of \looseness=-1, manual linebreaks and negative vspace

(but it's still leagues ahead of word)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I'm rooting for Typst to grow into something better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Note that this was an exaggeration of my experience with LaTeX, it's not like I use these commands everywhere. I think its better to let LaTeX do its job. Nevertheless, looseness=-1 can help to cram a few words in a new line into the previous paragraph, which subjectively looks better sometimes and frees up some space. Negative vspace around figures or tables can also be used to make more space for text and avoid unwanted page breaks. Manual linebreaks can come in handy if you switch TeX engines (e.g. pdfTeX -> LuaTeX) and somehow things don't look like they are supposed to look. You can do it right or you can add manual linebreaks here and there to get the same results.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Fuck LaTeX. I hate it with all my being. It sucks.

It's just the best option I have found so far so I can't let it go

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Most regular documents can be done with a markup renderer, e.g. Asciidoc

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Alternatively, there's Scribus if you really want fine grained control.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Perhaps you should have used all the format tools at your disposal.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Okay, I'll bite. What formatting tools specifically would you recommend for placing a figure or table close to where it appears in the text (say at the top of the page where the figure/table is first mentioned)?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

Skill issue!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (3 children)

That's why I use libreoffice

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That's why I use LaTeX. (I also use Arch btw.)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

But do you compile your LaTeX locally in Arch or raw dog it in an online editor?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

neovim with vimtex as an editor.

texlive-latexmk to compile.

zathura as a viewer.

git as version control.

Why would you use an online editor?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

This is the way

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Emacs as editor

Emacs as compiler

Emacs as viewer

Emacs as version controller

Edit: one tab, three spaces as indentation.

🧌🧌🧌😂

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Pain but freedom

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Pain butt freedom

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

That's why I use LaTeX

FTFY

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

and fuck microsoft for shoving this shit down our throats and making it the norm. serioulsy fuck word

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Or when you have a table and you move a column on a single row but then you can never get the column to line up with the rest again.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

This is what I get when I turn off snapping.