• VeganPizza69 Ⓥ
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    11 months ago

    Don’t forget to push.

    Several times I’ve lost large chunks of work because I usually copy files from the main folder to backup folders, but occasionally I copy files from a folder that was an old backup, reverting all files everywhere by mistake.

  • @[email protected]
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    1111 months ago
    git checkout -b final_version_revised2_REALLYFINALTHISTIME
    
    git commit -am “holy fuck I hope this really is the last edit” 
    
    git push
    
  • @[email protected]
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    2511 months ago

    What’s a good way to learn about Latex and Git. I’ve tried learning on my own but it’s very overwhelming.

    • @[email protected]
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      411 months ago

      I learned latex by doing my engineering homework in it. I quit using latex because I kept doing my engineering homework in it and it turns out it sucks to do

      • @[email protected]
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        111 months ago

        I’m doing my math homework with latex this semester, I’m probably slower but it looks good and is more maintainable.

        • @[email protected]
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          111 months ago

          The issue I had was if it was big enough to need maintainability it was a group project and that meant Google docs or it was math and that meant scrawled on paper. Or technical writing which is the prof that told us to try latex in the first place but I was too busy that semester to learn it

            • @[email protected]
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              111 months ago

              Fair, but this was 10 years ago, we were engineers, and it was hard enough explaining the work I did and the work I needed other people to do to them in a way these people understood.

              Also I can’t do math on computers. Like arithmetic sure, but real math, that requires actually writing it down. Idk that’s probably my old lady trait these days

              • @[email protected]
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                111 months ago

                Presumably you do the work on paper and then type it up. I doubt professors would accept paper work nowadays.

      • @[email protected]
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        111 months ago

        Well in this thread people were saying you can set up your own local git repository? What’s a newbie friendly way of doing that. I’ve watched videos and understand that git version control system but I can’t quite seem to grasp more than that.

        • @[email protected]
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          111 months ago

          You can just create a local repo with git init, and then never push to a (non existent) remote repository. Git is decentralized, meaning that you always have a functional and complete repo when you’re working with it.

          Depending on your tooling, you probably have a GUI for git if you’re a noob, which can usually “initialize a git repo” for you. I use the cli/lagygit tui, so I can’t help with that.

          • @[email protected]
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            611 months ago

            I’m in that that as well. I’m my age™ everybody wrote their bachelor and master thesis in LaTeX 🤷

            • @[email protected]
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              411 months ago

              I become a software developer later in life and never had the privilege to go to university, so sometimes I’m out of the loop on older tech.

              How did Latex compare to modern Git?

              • DerGottesknecht
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                611 months ago

                Latex is no versioning tool but a textsetting language. It outputs perfectly formatted Documents after building and takes care of aranging images, quotes and all the tedious stuff so after setting up your template you only have to care about content. It works well with git.

                Not like word where adding an image fucks the whole formatting.

                • @[email protected]
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                  311 months ago

                  Interesting.

                  Yeah word sucks. I’m a software developer now and have to deal with Word and Excel more than I ever thought I would.

            • @[email protected]
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              211 months ago

              Everyone still uses LaTeX for CS/Math at my school. It’s not an age thing. Just different circles. I don’t think anything similar even comes close to LaTeX yet.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 months ago
          \documentclass{article}
          \usepackage{soul}
          \begin{document}
          I'm 19 and I know how to use \LaTeX, \LaTeX is more used in academia, they taught me \LaTeX in Uni, but a lot of other people just won't ever heard of it because is rare to find in other places, most technical degrees and even a lot of uni ones won't use it \st{even if it's vastly superior to word}.
          
          \huge \LaTeX rules
          \end{document}
          
          
          • @[email protected]
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            11 months ago

            Same except that I taught myself. Written two essays for uni already with it and knew from the start that I wouldn’t touch word if I didn’t absolutely need it.

            Latex is confusing, the errors are often even less clear than Python or Java tracebacks, some packages have weird API or don’t work together, and I had to make a build script to work with it, but besides that, I have a good language and environment now to create pretty good PDFs with, including VCS with git and not having to use an editor that is not neovim.

            If you want to look deeper, there are a few more typesetting languages, some with more modern syntax. Markdown is surely the easiest, but not quite as powerful.

            Btw, is soul a real package?

            • @[email protected]
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              111 months ago

              Yes, the \LaTeX code I wrote is 100% compilable.

              I also learned most \LaTeX myself, school just taught me the basic sintaxis, but is widely used amongst students and academics.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      Why on Earth would you curse yourself with MS Office anyway, especially if writing docs is your professional responsibility?

      Why not use Git+Markdown+Pandoc, have your copy, data and layout separate?

      I understand that a lot of istitutions/companies impose stylistic/technical requirements for docs and publications, - still doesn’t mean you gotta stay married to the worst tooling.

      • Programmer Belch
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        811 months ago

        I also have my reports in latex inside a git repo, complete with a makefile to generate graphs from csv containing simulation results. However I am too ashamed to publish the entire version control to a public repo

        • Jeena
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          111 months ago

          It’s a editor helping you writing it, you cat still go inside and change things manually if you need/want to do that.

      • @[email protected]
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        1711 months ago

        and then there are fucking PIs insisting on word files who never heard of tracked charges let alone of file naming conventions.

        • @[email protected]
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          411 months ago

          Then start writing in Markdown. Markdown is easier in syntax, supports LaTeX equations, has metadata and is in plain text so you can use git. And the killer feature is you can use pandoc to convert the markdown file into word, pptx, LaTeX pdfs, html etc. you can also setup a make file that runs pandoc when you ask like this

          • @[email protected]
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            311 months ago

            yeah this is what i used for some projects, i.e. rmarkdown which also integrates the statistics part

        • Zagorath
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          1111 months ago

          I dunno what a PI is, but my honours thesis supervisor was the person who first introduced me to TeX. And gods, I wish I had known about it earlier in uni, or even back in high school. It is so useful when writing any sort of papers with sections and diagrams and bibliography.

          • @[email protected]
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            211 months ago

            Check out Typst (a newer TeX-like layout engine) if you have time, I’m interested in your opinion. I find it a bit simpler to use than TeX.

            • Zagorath
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              211 months ago

              Un(?)fortunately I don’t have much cause these days for either TeX or some equivalent to it. Anything I’m writing today is simple enough that it doesn’t need anything more sophisticated than markdown for formatting.

    • dream_weasel
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      2611 months ago

      Just like word documents are shit for papers and theses/dissertations it turns out. The formatting alone is a nightmare.

    • @[email protected]
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      2511 months ago

      .gitattributes can invoke Word on windows to diff versions, and there are plenty of open source scripts that can do it if you don’t have a copy of Word (or Windows) lying around.

      But Word is like shit for papers. Use LaTeX instead.

    • v_krishna
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      1111 months ago

      Haha my first thought seeing this meme is “do you want to start writing LaTeX by hand? Because this is how you start…”

    • @[email protected]
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      211 months ago

      I have enjoyed switching mine to HTML format which I then generate a PDF from. The only downside is that different browsers can render stuff slightly different, but that’s normally fixable with one line css change. And it’s not like I need to update my resume constantly on different machines.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        I was on Word, then LibreOffice Writer.
        Now thinking of making it a markdown source, with CSS styling to get an HTML based PDF. This way, the same source can be used on a webpage with different generation code.

        This seems to me, to be simpler than LATEX, but still good enough for a resume.

        • @[email protected]
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          411 months ago

          There is a standard called json-resume with a lot of generators for html and pdf or react-resume which is more like a CMS (not entirely sure about spelling, to lazy to search for it now)

          • @[email protected]
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            111 months ago

            Interesting, but not appealing to me.
            I have already been enchanted by discount and mesmerised by kramdown.

          • @[email protected]
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            111 months ago

            But I need to add that I never made it work for me because they are not really good for scientific CVs

          • @[email protected]
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            11 months ago

            kramdown and discount are 2 fun little tools.

            • kramdown is more fully featured and is a Ruby Gem.
            • discount is made in C and is more suitable if you are using it in an on-the-fly render process (∵ lesser CPU cycles), but it has lesser functionality features.
    • Magnor
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      1411 months ago

      Wait there are other ways to write a resume?

    • @[email protected]
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      411 months ago

      I wrote mine in LaTeX, highly recommend.

      I mean, I spent years writing LaTeX for school so it was real simple and mindless. YMMV

    • urda
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      511 months ago

      I have it is so worth it. I then use GitHub / GitLab releases to “release” a built PDF for my reference.

      • @[email protected]
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        311 months ago

        Do you have a good LaTeX template for it. I did make a data driven based LaTeX pdf for my resume but it’s a nightmare when applying for jobs these days, since they have that ATS parser nonsense, which will throw the entire resume down if it isn’t as very plain and boring word document without much formatting.

        • @[email protected]
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          211 months ago

          It depends heavily on region. I personally don’t think I ever had issues with parsers. I used the awesome CV template as a base. It’s fairly simple while still not being completely boring. You can find it on GitHub or overleaf iirc (it’s been a while).

          • @[email protected]
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            311 months ago

            Overleaf have hundreds of them. The problem is not the availability or using them. The problem is before your resume reaches a human, it is filtered via a ATS parser and generally it doesn’t like any fancy formatting. So unless your resume is machine readable, it automatically trashes your resume out.

            I was vehemently sitting on my Data driven LaTeX typeset resume for months but didn’t have much success until I took a plain old word template and ported everything there. It is what it is.

            • @[email protected]OPM
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              11 months ago

              Ever see StirlingPDF? You can just get it into a PDF then make sure it is compatible with that tool. It’s a Swiss Army Knife.

    • vortic
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      411 months ago

      I do this using overleaf. It’s been much easier to maintain and update since switching.

  • @[email protected]
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    4411 months ago

    Had to write a paper in college with 100 citations.

    We used zotero for citation management, and it would dump a bibtex file on demand.

    The paper was written in markdown, stored in git, and rendered through pandoc. We would cite a paper with parentheses and something resembling an id, like (lewis).

    We gave pandoc a “citation style definition”, and it took care of everything. Every citation was perfectly formatted. The bibliography was perfectly formatted. Inline references were perfect. Numbering was perfect. All the metadata was ripped from pdfs automatically. It was downright magical.

    • @[email protected]
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      311 months ago

      This is what I (a non coder who only knows git “download the Yuzu repo before they nuke it” and git “give me all the updates”) want to do when I get to write a paper. How much git did you have to learn to do this?

      • @[email protected]
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        311 months ago

        This is just basic make changes to file, git add and commit workflow. Other features of git like branching can be leveraged for greater control but are optional. What makes it magical is 3 seperate systems working together with such symphony namely git, Zotero and pandoc. Zotero is citation manager that you can use store scientific articles, papers, thesis etc. and it can produce a bibliography file and pandoc can reference those along with the citations in the make file to create a clean typesetted Word or LaTeX pdf with precise numbering, table of contents, citations and bibliography with correct format without you needing to edit anything.

    • @[email protected]
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      411 months ago

      yep, markdown is a great alternative to LaTeX if you don’t need fancy layouts or anything special

      • @[email protected]
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        511 months ago

        Markdown + pandoc means it goes through an intermediary latex template on the way to pdf land - which means your markdown can be a bastardized mix of markdown, html, latex commands, and sometimes more ;)

      • @[email protected]
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        111 months ago

        I absolutely love R markdown! Being able to iterate on your analysis and report at the same time is fantastic

    • jelloeater
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      111 months ago

      BTRFS for all us lame folks.

      PS Windows pervious versions is actually pretty good, but no one uses it on desktop.

  • The Bard in Green
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    1311 months ago

    I encountered an engineering firm that did this. I wanted to do it too.

    The company I worked for at the time (said engineering firm was doing subcontracting for us) was full of older business people who could never in a million years have wrapped their heads around the idea.

  • @[email protected]
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    1011 months ago

    Don’t you automatically put everything relevant you create in a version control system? And if not, why?

    There’s no thinking involved on it. Create repo; run editor. The sequence is automatic.

    • MacN'Cheezus
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      111 months ago

      Only makes sense if it’s text files (like source code). Even if DOCX files are just a bunch of XML files wearing ZIP trenchcoat as this guy says, chances are git doesn’t know that, so it’ll treat the whole thing as a binary file and save each revision as a separate file entirely, in which case you haven’t really accomplished much other than hiding away all those intermediate versions in an invisible drawer.

      • @[email protected]
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        111 months ago

        you haven’t really accomplished much other than hiding away all those intermediate versions in an invisible drawer

        What’s a huge improvement.

        And the alternative is what exactly? Using the Word’s internal version control? Yeah, right; good luck with that.

        • MacN'Cheezus
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          111 months ago

          I suppose it can be helpful if seeing a folder full of revisions would otherwise drive you crazy. I mean, I fully admit I also sometimes just dump a mess from my desk into a drawer just so I don’t have to look at it constantly.

          Also, if you have a consistent habit of writing accurate and descriptive commit comments, you may not need to rely on being able to compare line-by-line diffs to see what’s changed between versions.

          I think the moral of the story is that git is a somewhat suboptimal tool for this purpose and it whether it’s helpful at all depends far more on your habits and discipline than on the functionality it provides.

          • @[email protected]
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            111 months ago

            a somewhat suboptimal tool

            AKA the best we have around.

            If something appeared that handled opaque data better, it would take some thinking before creating the repository. Currently, there’s no reason to think at all.

            • MacN'Cheezus
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              111 months ago

              Outside of being able to comment on each revision when making a commit, I guess I don’t see what benefit this provides that regular, automated backups (such as Time Machine) don’t.

  • @[email protected]
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    11 months ago

    Counterpoint: advisor said no.

    “Just use Word, everyone else does. I have never heard of this latex thing, so must be just some trendy useless overengineered software that does Word’s job but worse. Word can track changes just fine, and you can leave comments.” proceeds to strikethrough, highlight, and inline comment everything instead of using either of those features “I want to read what you wrote, not fight technology” proceeds to email you three separate times after forgetting to attach v28 about how a graphic looks wrong because Word ate it

    • @[email protected]
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      1811 months ago

      you can still use word with git. it’s versioning first, diffing and merging only where possible. since you probably won’t branch you won’t need the latter, though.

      • @[email protected]
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        711 months ago

        Preaching to the choir. “But Box already supports ‘versioning’, why use a confusing hacker tool instead?”

          • @[email protected]
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            11 months ago

            A fine assumption given what I wrote. Unfortunately, we did both depending on what he felt like at the time. Yes, for the same doc.

      • @[email protected]
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        311 months ago

        Missing diffs is a problem, though.

        I don’t get how Microsoft owns GitHub yet hasn’t figured out any way to actually create a spec that would be git compatible for Excel, Word, and PowerPoint files yet.

      • @[email protected]
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        10 months ago

        Dude was shall we say, hands on about certain things. My dissertation is still embargoed because he is paranoid about being scooped. Joke’s on him, everything that hasn’t been published is not exciting enough to meet his own metric for publishability.

    • Fushuan [he/him]
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      1111 months ago

      I’m going to send you a pdf, you van email me back with the notes or comments in the PDF itself, whatever souts your fancy, and I’ll keep those notes and send you a new PDF with them.

      I did this and I had no issues with any of the thesises I have submitted in my bachelors or masters.

      First year calculus teacher, thank you SO much for forcing us to write submissions in latex.

      Also, overleaf is a thing, this is not like my 1st year of uni, this 11 years later or so. If your fucking professor never heard of latex they are just bad at academia and shouldn’t be teaching honestly. It’s not just about the field knowledge.

      • @[email protected]
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        211 months ago

        I’m going to send you a pdf, you van email me back with the notes or comments in the PDF itself, whatever souts your fancy, and I’ll keep those notes and send you a new PDF with them.

        I do this, but from Word.

        I learned Latex for my master thesis. Never used it again afterwards, except for my resumé.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      While correct in the sense of word and versioning via mail being a nightmare, I really don’t think you can expect anyone to learn latex just so they can comment in your document. I would have offered to send a pdf. Shoot me.

      • Zagorath
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        2611 months ago

        I would have offered to send a pdf

        I would have never considered doing anything but sending a PDF. Even if they do know LaTeX. Unless they’re offering to help edit the code for me, what good is it? It’s objectively harder to read than the formatted PDF.

        That said, marking up a PDF is much more difficult and does require more specialised software and know-how than editing plain text or even editing a Word document. So there are some advantages to it.

        • @[email protected]
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          211 months ago

          Adding comments to PDFs is actually very easy, is it not? Even that Adobe PDF crapware can do it, you don’t even need a good pdf reader (like Okular from KDE).

        • @[email protected]
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          811 months ago

          This is exactly it. My advisor wanted a word doc to edit, not a PDF. I wasn’t quite snooty enough to think that he should learn latex. Though, if he ever took the time to learn (what time?), I’m sure the writing process would be unbearable for other reasons not entirely related.