• @thevoidzero
    link
    English
    75 hours ago

    And the ease with which you can generate hundreds of lines of page with a simple text template and code.

    • AnIndefiniteArticle
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1
      edit-2
      2 hours ago

      Right.

      Do your writing in text files accompanying the image files (figures). The LaTeX code is just instructions for how to render the various text sources arrange the figures on pages to be printed or rendered as slides.

      It separates the flowing creative experience of writing and documenting what happened in the experiment from the fiddling creative experience of rendering, editing, and presentation to ensure that the text and figures line up appropriately and are on appropriate pages.

      Separating fact finding from presentation is an important barrier in the scientific method.

      • @thevoidzero
        link
        English
        22 hours ago

        Yup. When I rerun my things, in latex I just overwrite the plots file (pdf/png) and compile latex. In word I have to find where it was and replace it there. It’s way easier on latex if you make your code just write plot files in the same location.

        • AnIndefiniteArticle
          link
          fedilink
          English
          11 hour ago

          You can use a symlink to point to the figures directory of a certain run of the code. Add git history to the mix, and now you have an auditable record of what version of the code’s output ended up in each version of the paper.

          You can be so anal and precise about everything.