[gjm11]

So, the situations in which I would use LaTeX rather than something cruder but friendlier are these: (1) I am typesetting something with nontrivial mathematical formulae in it. (2) I want the excellent typographical quality that comes from, e.g., the very nice Knuth-Plass dynamic-programming algorithm for line breaks. (3) I want to use some clever thing someone has implemented in LaTeX (say, to add Feynman diagrams to what I write). (4) I want to interoperate with other people who are using LaTeX. (5) I want to typeset something big and complicated that triggers misbehaviour in things like Word.

This system, at least so far, (1) doesn't do formulae, (2) doesn't have Knuth-Plass line breaking, (3) isn't compatible with LaTeX, (4) isn't compatible with LaTeX, and (5) takes almost 1s/page to do its thing.

It may very well be an excellent system, and deserve to take over the world of typesetting -- but at the moment it surely shouldn't be called "a modern LaTeX".

[p4bl0]

I would add that the original title "Introducing RinohType the Python document processor", is way better than the one of the HN submission. It is not a "modern LaTeX", let alone a "LaTeX rewrite" (which is implied by the "in 6500 lines of Python").

[brechtm]

Yes, I plead guilty to tweaking the title a little for marketing purposes. I'm sorry if that got some people overexcited.

RinohType should eventually be able to replace LaTeX though, so it is not that far-fetched either. Also, the first paragraph of the article should help temper that excitement.

[qznc]

You want a drop-in LaTeX replacement. Use LuaTeX.

[iXce]

Well, I think we all expected a "modern LaTeX" based on the title, not something that's much closer to a PDF producer than a LaTeX equivalent. The title is the issue.

[phaemon]

I might want to use LuaTex, if I knew what it was. It seems they can't be bothered to actually say what it is in their website, in any of their links, or in the introduction chapter of their manual.

I therefore take it that no-one who actually writes ever uses it.

[andor]

Not sure if you're trolling, but luatex.org explains it right in the first paragraph:

LuaTeX is an extended version of pdfTeX using Lua as an embedded scripting language. The LuaTeX projects main objective is to provide an open and configurable variant of TeX while at the same time offering downward compatibility.

[phaemon]

No, I'm not trolling. I don't know what pdfTex is either. Why on earth are you telling me what a project does in terms of another project I'm not familiar with?!

Edit: that's what I meant by "none of their links", the pdfTex page doesn't say what it does either!

[andor]

Maybe it's not what you intended, but to me you seem to be proud of your ignorance about a piece of software that's part of computer science history. Instead of writing that comment, you could have learned something by reading about TeX on Wikipedia.

[phaemon]

I shouldn't seem that way to anyone reasonable.

I know what TeX is. I should know what luatex is because I've been to their website, read through some links and even read through the introduction to their manual, and still I don't know.

And just listen to yourself: if I want to know what luatex is I shouldn't find out on their own website, I should have to go to Wikipedia?!

Do you know what it is? You've managed to reply to me twice and in neither of those replies have you simply stated: "luatex is software that does x. You'd want to use to to do y."

[qznc]

Because people do not care about their TeX interpreter. Today, nearly every LaTeX writer uses pdfTex. If they switch to luaTex nothing changes, because luaTeX is (intended to be) fully backwards compatible. If you start writing your own packages, then luaTex becomes interesting.

[phaemon]

> Because people do not care about their TeX interpreter.

I think they might if they're at the luaTex website. How does it become interesting? Is it a secret?

[stevepike]

If you're curious, I wrote implementations of the Knuth-Plass line breaking algorithm in ruby [1] and clojure [2]. Nothing you'd want to use in production but it was a fun experiment.

1. https://github.com/scpike/word-wrapping/blob/master/ruby/lib...

2. https://github.com/scpike/word-wrapping/blob/master/clojure/...

[GuiA]

What are the "cruder but friendlier" alternatives that you use?

[gjm11]

Microsoft Word (alas) or one of its generally even worse competitors. For business documents that need sharing with other people who have to use Microsoft Word so they can share them with other people who, etc.

TeXmacs, a more-or-less-WYSIWYG document editor with approximately TeX-compatible formulae and suchlike. I actually use this much more often than TeX or LaTeX.

Plain text :-).

HTML (either edited by hand -- horrible but in some contexts less horrible than (La)TeX -- or using a WYSIWYGish tool like BlueGriffon).

Someone mentioned Markdown. I've somehow managed to avoid ever using Markdown (not counting things like Stack Overflow and occasional blog comments) but it certainly belongs in the list.

[eru]

I guess markdown is in the list?

[abritishguy]

So much this! I hate latex but this is not a replacement in any way.