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by riperoni 881 days ago
This article really doesn't get what LaTeX does. Of course it is overkill to have 5 lines of text rendered with LaTeX into a PDF. But the point of LaTeX is exactly to set the typesetting of an output document in stone. PDF is meant to do that and HTML cannot do that. A PDF conserves everything and that is precisely the point to have a set layout for printing or displaying on different devices.

Yes, there should be easy ways to display math on the web. No, this doesn't mean that LaTeX is obsolete.

Besides, what about references, both external and internal? Probably needs more "modern" tooling.

1 comments

> to have a set layout for printing or displaying on different devices.

That’s a horrible way to go about it. Already in the 90s it was clear that varying display sizes was a problem, and it has gotten orders of magnitudes worse since then.

The concept of a single set layout that is suitable for everyone is utterly absurd.

Then do not use a tool that was designed for typesetting printed pages which is what LaTex is for. The author of the article seems to think about LaTex only for math rendering. But that is just a fraction of what it is used for. Complex diagrams with tikz or typesetting entire books, so that adding content in an arbitrary place still makes the rest of the book look good without breaking layout are some of the examples of why I would use LaTex instead of html
That’s exactly what the author says at the beginning:

> are you sure you have to use LaTeX?