![]() ![]() The point is not this, is the fact that TeXmacs allows to concentrate on what is important (I wrote a short article explaining this point of view here: ) and still produce a LaTeX file at the end, to send to editors or to put on arXiv. Many of us used LaTeX since long time (for me it started around 1996 when I was a student in physics) and many of us know to use LaTeX well. If you write your document in TeXmacs and then export to LaTeX there is no scheme code there. This may not be fair, but it’s a true statement about appearances within the community.īut the file created will be exactly Latex, without Scheme. Other than that, anybody in math or theoretical CS who doesn’t use TeX looks like a rube. There are a handful of older or eccentric researchers who have never learned TeX. Not using TeX in a math/CS paper is not nearly as extreme as writing in crayon, but it is similar in spirit. It’s not a logical guarantee, but if you see a research paper written in crayon, it’s perfectly reasonable not to take it seriously (since it almost certainly isn’t serious). Very few people who write in crayon have anything interesting or worthwhile to say. ![]() ![]() Logically, this tells us nothing about the content of the paper, but in practice, it tells us a lot about the author. Suppose someone handwrites a paper in crayon. Nobody’s saying the use of TeX is a fully reliable test for whether a paper is good, but here’s an analogy: That I think is what Scott was trying to get at. But lots of things, like the presence or absence of spelling errors and weird notation and typography, can raise or lower expectations at the outset. Nothing short of actually reading a paper (or at least reading enough to find a definite error) is enough to form a conclusive judgement of its content. Again, not conclusive, but not a good sign. TeX is part of mathematical culture and using anything else might be similar to using an unconventional notation for a familiar math concept. What can I say if a paper is full of spelling errors, that doesn’t necessarily mean the mathematical content is wrong, but it’s not a good sign. of whatever subject they’re writing about, are highly correlated (though not identical) with those who can’t be bothered to learn the subject itself. NER: All I claim is that empirically, it’s a very successful heuristic.Īs for why this is so, one might speculate as follows: those who can’t be bothered to learn the tools, notation, conventions, etc. Take a look at the comments on the blog post.įrom Scott (the author of the blog post): ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |