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Subject:
From:
Marcin Borkowski <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 2 Feb 2014 09:21:47 +0100
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Dnia 2014-02-01, o godz. 18:32:26
William F Hammond <[log in to unmask]> napisaƂ(a):

> There are two long-standing questions underlying this discussion.
> 
> 1. Can present LaTeX users learn to write well-structured user-level
> LaTeX?

No.

I am (unfortunately) rather a pessimist here.  I work for a journal,
and I'm (among others) responsible for typesetting.  Also, I'm
sometimes perceived as a "local TeX guru" at my faculty (though by no
means am I the only or best expert in LaTeX), so I see people's LaTeX
code.  What do I see, and repeatedly?


{\bf whatever} instead of \textbf{...}


\begin{enumerate}
\item[a)] ...
\item[b)] ...
\end{enumerate}


Bibliography rendered as

\begin{enumerate}
\item[[1]] ...
\item[[2]] ...
\end{enumerate}

(yes, it doesn't exactly work, but who cares?)


$^{\small 2}$\footnotetext[2]{My cool footnote}

(No, I'm not making this up!  Note also that this gives a warning
nobody ever cares to read, not to mention understand.  It works,
right?)


\section*{{\centering\bf 2. MY COOL SECTION\par}


This is the end of the previous paragraph...\\
\indent And this is the beginning of the next one.


...which leads to the following\\
\vspace{0.4cm}
\noindent\textbf{Definition.} ...


The following formula holds for all x $>$ 0...


and many, many things like these.

A friend of mine, asked "what to do so that people stop writing bad
LaTeX (user-level) code", gave me a brilliant answer.  After each
stupid coding practice, cut them off one finger.  After committing ten
idiotic mistakes, they'll stop writing bad LaTeX.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Adam Mickiewicz University

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