Learnlatex.org: A place to learn LaTeX online

Fun fact: about 20 years ago, LaTeX developers were lamenting the stagnation of LaTeX and LaTeX being surpassed on a technical level by its new competitor (in the TeX world), ConTeXt.<p>Since then LaTeX has basically kept on stagnating in the name of backwards compatibility, while ConTeXt keeps on progressing; it already broke backwards compatibility several times (it&#x27;s latest implementation is called LMTX).<p>But the inertia is so powerful that nobody except TeX geeks even knows what ConTeXt is. How does that happen?<p>Sidenote: it&#x27;s not just about ConTeXt, even LuaTeX, the latest (but not new anymore) implementation of TeX in general, is being ignored by scientific publishers.<p>Meanwhile, ConTeXt is mostly used for demanding typesetting of books.<p>And, BTW, using ConTeXt (or LuaTeX) doesn&#x27;t even necessarily mean writing TeX anymore, it&#x27;s possible to drive the engines through the Lua C API, or with XML, etc.<p>ConTeXt links:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.contextgarden.net&#x2F;Main_Page" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.contextgarden.net&#x2F;Main_Page</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ConTeXt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ConTeXt</a><p>Mailing list: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mailman.ntg.nl&#x2F;mailman&#x2F;listinfo&#x2F;ntg-context" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mailman.ntg.nl&#x2F;mailman&#x2F;listinfo&#x2F;ntg-context</a>

For all ye complaining about LaTeX being hard to use: use pandoc. Pandoc can convert your standard markdown&#x2F;asciidoc file to many different formats. And, you can embed LaTeX inside, giving you both flexibility and ease of use.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pandoc.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pandoc.org</a>

I use some form of TeX (LaTeX or XeTeX) almost daily, and I often think about the future of (La)TeX and potential replacements.<p>I think that we desperately need some modern language for document preparation, which will replace TeX and its derivatives, but I also don&#x27;t see anything like that on the horizon. The biggest drawbacks of TeX are lack of proper Unicode support; lack of support of modern font formats; and outdated programming practices. Tools like XeTeX, LuaTeX and ConTeXt tackle these problems with some success, but they are still not perfect. Also, they are too similar to TeX to bring drastic changes to programmers. We need something that is designed from zero specifically as a TeX replacement (including compiler, package manager, popular packages, bibliography manager, converters, etc...). I can only hope for better future...<p>BTW, fun fact: TeX is still actively developed. Knuth fixed some bugs in the kernel last month (after few years of pause).

I hope the Tectonic[1] and it&#x27;s oxidized (completely reimplemented in Rust) fork[2][3] will take off.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tectonic-typesetting.github.io&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tectonic-typesetting.github.io&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;crlf0710&#x2F;tectonic&#x2F;tree&#x2F;oxidize" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;crlf0710&#x2F;tectonic&#x2F;tree&#x2F;oxidize</a> [3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tectonic-typesetting&#x2F;tectonic&#x2F;issues&#x2F;459" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tectonic-typesetting&#x2F;tectonic&#x2F;issues&#x2F;459</a>

From the first lesson:<p>Take for example the element &lt;h2&gt; indicating a new section in an HTML document. LaTeX also has a command for this; here one would use the \section command.<p>——<p>I feel like that’s making a very broad assumption about people writing semantic markup in HTML. H{1-6} is for a header. It has nothing to do with a section (&lt;section&gt; or otherwise).

I know it&#x27;s unrealistic, but I wish someone would reinvent Latex. I don&#x27;t really want anyone to learn it. It&#x27;s sad it seems kind of the best tools for advanced use out there...

When writing my dissertation, latex decided that aesthetics require it to omit one of my paragraphs.<p>It’s one of those things that is not so funny near a deadline :-)<p>Of course, it was some sort of user error.

I enjoy writing Plain TeX. I only wish there were a version of pdftex independent from the monstrously large modern TeX distributions...

For people interested in learning LaTeX, I learned LaTeX from this PDF well enough to do my reports and understand search results about LaTeX: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tobi.oetiker.ch&#x2F;lshort&#x2F;lshort.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tobi.oetiker.ch&#x2F;lshort&#x2F;lshort.pdf</a>

I&#x27;ve used latex on and off over the years, I can write complicated math expressions off the top of my head pretty easily. For document formatting and package use, however, I need to look up syntax and examples every time. Where can I learn the how all the messy syntax of latex (aside from the math notation itself) is supposed to work? Or should I just stop trying, because it&#x27;s a lovecraftian tangle that will drive me insane?

Not many really talking about the linked resource here but it looks quite beautiful (especially the font). Short for what it is, but could be useful to beginners. I find Overleaf pages also to provide good resources on LaTeX.

Why do the lessons only have code but not the rendered results? It&#x27;s difficult to follow along if you don&#x27;t know what the code is actually doing...

I used this in school it is great!