this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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What do you use instead?
I avoid it and use zip or 7z if I can. But for some crazy reason some people stil insist on using that garbage tool and I have no idea why.
Because everyone else does, and if everyone else does, then I must, and if I do, then everyone else must, and then everyone else does.
Repeat loop.
For all I care it goes on the same garbage dump as LaTeX.
I think that's pretty mean towards the free software developers spending their spare time on Latex and the GNU utils.
I and many academics use Latex, and I personally am very happy to be able to use something which is plain text and FLOSS.
I also don't see your problems with tar; it does one thing and it does it good enough.
The problem is the usage of the tool which people invent different mnemonics for because it's UX is stuck in 1986 and the only people who remember the parameters are those who use it daily.
Similar thing for LaTeX: it's so absurdly crusty and painful to work with it's only used by people who have no alternative.
//ETA
Also, I don't want to be mean towards the maintainers of LaTeX. I'm sorry if I made any LaTeX maintainer reading this upset or feel inferior. Working on the LaTeX code is surely no easy endeavour and people who still do that in 2023 deserve a good amount of respect.
But everytime I had to work with LaTeX or any of its wrappers was just pure frustration at the usage and the whole project. The absolute chaos of different distributions, templates, classes and whatnot is something I never want to experience again.
speaking of which, you might want to check out typst if you haven't heard of it - I really hope this replaces most uses of LaTeX in the next years.
Thanks I'll keep an eye on that project. I did try pandoc and LyX in the past to ease the pain but typst appears to have the courage to finally let LaTeX be and not build a new wrapper around it.