[TUHS] eqn

George Michaelson ggm at algebras.org
Fri Oct 4 15:12:43 AEST 2019


I'm going to give a contrarian response. You may be wrong, and he
maybe should do LaTex.

Why?

because it's what his peer group, and professors, and other people
like markers and tutorial assisters will expect, and he can use things
like OverLeaf very probably on the Uni tab, which has shared edit, all
kinds of useful templates, and help communities.

You don't want to tie him to your apron strings, for help: He needs to
learn how to go out into the world and hassle other people for help
too!

My son, who is in the same kind-of cohort but perhaps 6years ahead,
wrote his thesis in OverLeaf and did very well in it.

The markup is XArchiV and journal friendly: His chances of getting
through peer review barriers which obsess with form, and not function
(sad) is better.

Sometimes, being the stand-out is not good. I was the only visible
Athiest in school and when I found a copy of the scots prayer book, it
was different page numbers and I couldn't find the hymn before they'd
finished singing it. I guess the example I am giving doesn't help my
own story because I am an essentially HAPPY athiest, but still: you
don't always want to be running against the stream.

If the maths is good, he's born to fly solo, and is heading into place
of excellence, none of this will matter. If he is looking to relate to
his community, it may.

On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 2:21 PM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>
> So my kid is using LaTex and I'd like to show him what troff can do.
> For the record, back when he was born, 20 years ago, I was program
> chair for Linux Expo (which sounds like a big deal but all it meant
> was I had the job of formatting the proceedings).  LaTex was a big
> deal but I pushed people towards troff and the few people that took
> the push came back and said "holy crap is this easy".
>
> My kid is a math guy, does anyone have some eqn input and output
> that they can share?
>
> Thanks,
>
> --lm


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