Modern LaTeX

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Naming, Pronunciation, and Gatekeeping

  • Long subthread on how to write and say “LaTeX” and “arXiv”: TeX’s X is Greek chi, so many argue for a guttural “-tech,” others use “lay-tek/lay-teks,” some “lah-tek.”
  • One camp sees strict spelling/pronunciation as elitist shibboleths; another sees them as harmless in-jokes and evidence of typographic ambition (non-ASCII letters).
  • Linguistically inclined commenters note confusion from non-technical pronunciation guides and emphasize the intended fricative sound /x/, though the original author of LaTeX reportedly didn’t want to prescribe a pronunciation.

LaTeX Strengths and Frustrations

  • Strong points: math, figures, references, microtypography (via microtype), stable long-term documents, and rich package ecosystem (e.g., Beamer, TikZ/Asymptote).
  • Complaints: cryptic errors and huge logs, slow compiles, awkward tables and floats, global state and package interactions, esoteric syntax, difficulty customizing layouts, and poor composability in some macros.
  • Some praise its consistency and beauty; others call it powerful but unpleasant, or say it drove them away from research.

Typst as “Modern LaTeX”

  • Enthusiasts tout Typst’s: cleaner, more readable syntax; fast compilation; good defaults; strong tables; built‑in features for blog/docs (figures, TOC, custom boxes); good tooling and responsive maintainers.
  • Skeptics note: repurposing many ASCII characters as markup, immature CJK support, missing or incomplete microtypography (though some features exist and are improving), and—crucially—no official journal/conference templates.
  • Some stress it’s largely open source, with only the SaaS editor closed; others worry about any company-driven core and pricing/signup emphasis.

Ecosystem, Standards, and Longevity

  • Concern that Overleaf-like services or new engines may fragment a currently durable standard; LaTeX is seen as an interchange format many publishers directly edit.
  • Inertia is a major barrier: huge installed base, templates, personal scripts, and decades-old .tex files that still compile.
  • Some argue any successor must either compile existing LaTeX or coexist by outputting LaTeX for publishers.

Alternatives and Toolchains

  • Mentioned alternatives: Markdown (+Pandoc), Asciidoc, Quarto, MyST, LyX, Org-mode, YAML-based CV generators, and HTML+CSS with paged-media engines (Paged.js, WeasyPrint, PrinceXML).
  • Debates over whether LaTeX’s main competition should be Word vs. web tech; some see responsive HTML as the real future, others emphasize that journals still demand LaTeX/Word PDFs.
  • Tools like Tectonic (XeTeX-based) and LuaLaTeX are cited as “modern” LaTeX engines; recent guidance favors LuaTeX over XeTeX.