Editor war in (La)TeXverse!
Contest
add tag
a month ago निरंजन

Why should one use editor X for (La)TeX?

(X stands for your favourite editor.)

comments
transcript
a month
निरंजन replying to barbara beeton — Sunday, 2nd Feb 2025 17:06

Hmm, I agree. Thanks for elaborating your point.

19 hours
barbara beeton replying to निरंजन — Saturday, 1st Feb 2025 21:50

What I think is important is being able to reliably produce the file that is needed, as efficiently as possible. I learned TeX directly from members of the TeX Project at Stanford, and as a prerequisite I was required to learn emacs as that was the editor they were using. Emacs had/has an excellent tutorial, and that was my teaching tool. Since then, emacs commands have become second nature, and regardless of what input tool I’m using, if I accidentally make a mistake, my fingers automatically use the emacs correction method, no conscious thought involved. Have you any idea what that does if you’re forced to correct someone else’s MS Word file? Having lost untold hours trying to recover from such disasters, I avoid other input tools whenever I can, and assume that other people are also creatures of habit.

17 hours
निरंजन replying to Skillmon — Saturday, 1st Feb 2025 04:40

Hahaha, yes, of course! I have similar reasons for getting stuck with GNU Emacs and yeah, when somebody asks me my recommendations, my answer is also pretty much similar. I complain about inconsistently indented code a lot, though. I absolutely hate the editors that don’t automate this simple requirement.

6 hours
Skillmon replying to निरंजन — Friday, 31st Jan 2025 22:38

I hope you know that I only do those because of tradition. I’m absolutely indifferent towards Emacs. I just happened to learn VIM “a while” ago and stuck with it, I don’t see the benefit to learn Emacs for myself and to anyone asking for editor recommendations I’ll always say that I personally use VIM though it’s not everybody’s cup of tea and they should really consider picking it (but I guess the same is true for Emacs).

5 hours
निरंजन replying to frougon — Friday, 31st Jan 2025 17:33

I had to learn it for a task at my workplace. I don’t use BibTeX as BibLaTeX is a much advanced alternative, but this document is so well written! I really enjoyed that activity because the documentation was so nice. 😃

frougon replying to निरंजन — Friday, 31st Jan 2025 17:28

Ah, I didn’t know BibTeX used such a language. I encountered RPN in the HP48 series of pocket calculators. My GX was bought around 1996 and is still working. Great calculators.

an hour
निरंजन replying to frougon — Friday, 31st Jan 2025 16:15

True, I just tried to write it and ended up having this, hehe. Time to read TTB again!

3 hours
frougon replying to निरंजन — Friday, 31st Jan 2025 13:29

In my book, RPN would rather look like ((((Lisp ELisp or) difficult is) not) !). 😉

9 hours
निरंजन replying to Skillmon — Friday, 31st Jan 2025 04:39

I enjoy your GNU Emacs-rant so much that I don’t even try to cook up comebacks 😂

निरंजन replying to frougon — Friday, 31st Jan 2025 04:36

Oh!! RPN?

6 hours
Skillmon — Thursday, 30th Jan 2025 22:28

(or at least something Lisp inspired)

Skillmon replying to frougon — Thursday, 30th Jan 2025 22:28

well, I can read it, so that’s that. During dayjob one of the development tools shows the syntax tree it derived from the source code in a Lisp dialect.

2 hours
frougon replying to Skillmon — Thursday, 30th Jan 2025 20:07

(! (not (is (or Lisp ELisp) difficult)))

20 minutes
Skillmon replying to J...S — Thursday, 30th Jan 2025 19:46

with NeoVim you can customise it using Lua, which I find infinitely easier than Lisp (because I know Lua, but have no idea about Lisp, well no idea isn’t correct, I have some basic syntax things in my mind, but I never wrote Lisp)

2 hours
J...S — Thursday, 30th Jan 2025 17:47

I felt that vim has better default keybindings. Don’t have to leave the home row too much for basic movements. But emacs is more easily customized.

32 minutes
Skillmon replying to निरंजन — Thursday, 30th Jan 2025 17:15

and if you had better friends you’d have learned VIM instead.

6 hours
निरंजन replying to barbara beeton — Thursday, 30th Jan 2025 11:00

I agree, but editor wars are not only fun, but also informative, at times. I used to argue with my friend about my then favourite editor, i.e., TeX Studio. He tried to entice me with the feature-set of GNU Emacs. He was successful, of course, but if we had not argued at all, I might not ever have switched.

2 hours
J...S — Thursday, 30th Jan 2025 08:33

I haven’t got much experience latexing, but I agree with the last comment.
I am interested to know what the skills invovlved are though.
Do you mean that the content is more important than TeX and the editor?

16 hours
barbara beeton — Wednesday, 29th Jan 2025 16:12

Well, I do use emacs, but I claim, as the human Editor of TUGboat, that there are certain skills involved that are more important than which computer editor tickles your fingers.

4 hours
निरंजन — Wednesday, 29th Jan 2025 12:23

Should we allow multiple posts for this? I already have an two active fellow GNU Emacs users here. 😃 The other option is to edit existing posts. Anyway the battle is between editors and not between us… 😛

Enter question or answer id or url (and optionally further answer ids/urls from the same question) from

Separate each id/url with a space. No need to list your own answers; they will be imported automatically.