this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Science Memes

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LPT Do it. (mander.xyz)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 126 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

Counterpoint: advisor said no.

"Just use Word, everyone else does. I have never heard of this latex thing, so must be just some trendy useless overengineered software that does Word's job but worse. Word can track changes just fine, and you can leave comments." proceeds to strikethrough, highlight, and inline comment everything instead of using either of those features "I want to read what you wrote, not fight technology" proceeds to email you three separate times after forgetting to attach v28 about how a graphic looks wrong because Word ate it

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

While correct in the sense of word and versioning via mail being a nightmare, I really don't think you can expect anyone to learn latex just so they can comment in your document. I would have offered to send a pdf. Shoot me.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I would have offered to send a pdf

I would have never considered doing anything but sending a PDF. Even if they do know LaTeX. Unless they're offering to help edit the code for me, what good is it? It's objectively harder to read than the formatted PDF.

That said, marking up a PDF is much more difficult and does require more specialised software and know-how than editing plain text or even editing a Word document. So there are some advantages to it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

This is exactly it. My advisor wanted a word doc to edit, not a PDF. I wasn't quite snooty enough to think that he should learn latex. Though, if he ever took the time to learn (what time?), I'm sure the writing process would be unbearable for other reasons not entirely related.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Adding comments to PDFs is actually very easy, is it not? Even that Adobe PDF crapware can do it, you don't even need a good pdf reader (like Okular from KDE).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

With the Todo package you can easily make online comments what needs to change.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago

galaxy-brain: don't even talk to your advisors, just hand in a finished PDF

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago (2 children)

you can still use word with git. it's versioning first, diffing and merging only where possible. since you probably won't branch you won't need the latter, though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Preaching to the choir. "But Box already supports 'versioning', why use a confusing hacker tool instead?"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

oh I see, you have a shared drive. i assumed you send it around as emails.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

A fine assumption given what I wrote. Unfortunately, we did both depending on what he felt like at the time. Yes, for the same doc.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Missing diffs is a problem, though.

I don't get how Microsoft owns GitHub yet hasn't figured out any way to actually create a spec that would be git compatible for Excel, Word, and PowerPoint files yet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Easy, they want you to buy a onedrive subscription.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

wait, your advisor looks at your work?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Dude was shall we say, hands on about certain things. My dissertation is still embargoed because he is paranoid about being scooped. Joke's on him, everything that hasn't been published is not exciting enough to meet his own metric for publishability.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I'm going to send you a pdf, you van email me back with the notes or comments in the PDF itself, whatever souts your fancy, and I'll keep those notes and send you a new PDF with them.

I did this and I had no issues with any of the thesises I have submitted in my bachelors or masters.

First year calculus teacher, thank you SO much for forcing us to write submissions in latex.

Also, overleaf is a thing, this is not like my 1st year of uni, this 11 years later or so. If your fucking professor never heard of latex they are just bad at academia and shouldn't be teaching honestly. It's not just about the field knowledge.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

That's assuming they are competent enough to even use a PDF.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I'm going to send you a pdf, you van email me back with the notes or comments in the PDF itself, whatever souts your fancy, and I'll keep those notes and send you a new PDF with them.

I do this, but from Word.

I learned Latex for my master thesis. Never used it again afterwards, except for my resumé.