At some point I started writing my own templates rather than packages. There are LaTeX packages for almost everything imaginable, but it's always been annoying to get a new document up quickly.
So now I have my template repository (https://github.com/x3ro/x3-latex) which has a very basic init script, which I call like this:
x3-init x3-paper some/folder/
And it creates a complete skeleton for the document, including a tiny build script that transforms the main text body written in markdown to LaTeX (because who really wants to write LaTeX lists and stuff, right?).
My point is that I find such a list of "essential LaTeX packages" quite pointless, especially if it's only ten or so of them. It's like writing a post on the "10 best parts of a motorcycle" or something. There are thousands of awesome packages out there, and creating a repertoire and putting everything together takes time. I'd welcome it if somebody came up with a really nice template repository style thing for LaTeX, though.
> There are thousands of awesome packages out there
Statements like this are terrible for latex adoption and with all due respect an exaggeration bordering on bullshit. "OMG, I need to learn about thousands of packages to write my paper? Screw that I am using LibreOffice or Word."
I doubt you can come up with a list of 2,000 awesome packages. It looks like CTAN has 1500 packages and a lot of those are obsolete, redundant and/or just plain "not awesome." More importantly I would be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of users can get by with less than 50 packages. A quick grep of you x3-paper repo and it seems that all of your use cases combined also fall under the 50 packages mark. A new user can get started and produce quality documents with far less than 50 packages.
I might have gone overboard with "thousands of _awesome_ packages", but the CTAN I'm looking at lists 4706 packages from around 2000 authors. I'm not sure how you determined that most of these are redundant and/or obsolete. At least MacTex seems to ship with quite a lot of them (2.3G with 600M optionals).
I would be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of users can get by with less than 50 packages.
When did I claim that this is not the case? Less then 50 packages yes, but not the same packages for all users.. Many packages for many different use-cases.
Statements like this are terrible for latex adoption
Yeah sure, because the people here at HN will think "Oh no if there are thousands of packages I will need to learn _all of them_ before writing my first document.
I'd say that what's terrible for LaTeX adoption is that it's terrible annoying to write...
Hell, in most of my documents I'm hard-pressed to find a use for more than 5 packages, let alone 50. My résumé isn't using any packages at all right now; it's just using vanilla LaTeX, since I think that looks nice enough and it's easy enough to manage.
Comments
At some point I started writing my own templates rather than packages. There are LaTeX packages for almost everything imaginable, but it's always been annoying to get a new document up quickly.
So now I have my template repository (https://github.com/x3ro/x3-latex) which has a very basic init script, which I call like this:
x3-init x3-paper some/folder/
And it creates a complete skeleton for the document, including a tiny build script that transforms the main text body written in markdown to LaTeX (because who really wants to write LaTeX lists and stuff, right?).
My point is that I find such a list of "essential LaTeX packages" quite pointless, especially if it's only ten or so of them. It's like writing a post on the "10 best parts of a motorcycle" or something. There are thousands of awesome packages out there, and creating a repertoire and putting everything together takes time. I'd welcome it if somebody came up with a really nice template repository style thing for LaTeX, though.
PS: My favorite LaTeX package is definitely minted (http://stackoverflow.com/a/1985330/124257) for syntax highlighting.
I doubt you can come up with a list of 2,000 awesome packages. It looks like CTAN has 1500 packages and a lot of those are obsolete, redundant and/or just plain "not awesome." More importantly I would be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of users can get by with less than 50 packages. A quick grep of you x3-paper repo and it seems that all of your use cases combined also fall under the 50 packages mark. A new user can get started and produce quality documents with far less than 50 packages.
"With all due respect" sigh
I might have gone overboard with "thousands of _awesome_ packages", but the CTAN I'm looking at lists 4706 packages from around 2000 authors. I'm not sure how you determined that most of these are redundant and/or obsolete. At least MacTex seems to ship with quite a lot of them (2.3G with 600M optionals).
When did I claim that this is not the case? Less then 50 packages yes, but not the same packages for all users.. Many packages for many different use-cases.
Yeah sure, because the people here at HN will think "Oh no if there are thousands of packages I will need to learn _all of them_ before writing my first document.
I'd say that what's terrible for LaTeX adoption is that it's terrible annoying to write...
Why "sigh" at a remark that was written in order to be polite and yet still convey strong disagreement?
Hell, in most of my documents I'm hard-pressed to find a use for more than 5 packages, let alone 50. My résumé isn't using any packages at all right now; it's just using vanilla LaTeX, since I think that looks nice enough and it's easy enough to manage.
Another advantage of vanilla LaTeX is as a litmus test: if your interviewer recognizes Computer Modern, you know they're legit.