LaTeX (/ˈlɑːtɛk/ ⓘ LAH-tek or /ˈleɪtɛk/ LAY-tek,[2] often stylized as LaTeX) is a software system for typesetting documents
Note the pronunciation is distinct from /ˈleɪˌtɛks/ the material.
But, sure everyone has to make that joke at least once.
As a long-time LaTeX user, I can confirm that there’s quite a bit of overlap between that and masochism.
I was going to say I like the outcome of LaTeX, far more than the experience of actually setting the outcome up.
I love gimp
I love windows.
Oh, wait… nooo…
Once at school I wanted to know how to use Japanese characters so I search for “japanese in latex” on the images section. Not what I was looking for but not disappointed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The one is nearly sexual power play condemned by a huge portion of society, the other is wearing uncomfortable clothes
Curious, is anyone pronouncing them the same or does this only work in text?
I’ve not heard anyone pronounce them the same, but I don’t doubt they’re out there. Probably a decent overlap with the people who pronounce GIF like the peanut butter.
I guess I’m one of them. I’ve never used LaTeX, but I don’t know how else I’d pronounce that.
Lay-tech or Lah-tech is how I’ve been told it’s pronounced, don’t ask which one is correct, I don’t know
IIRC its creator said it’s Lay-tech
It’s “Lay” because it’s borrowed from / referencing “lay person” i.e. not a member of the (TeX) priesthood.
The last sound being one that afaik doesn’t exist in English. It’s like the j in jalapeño but waaay guttural. It’s the Greek letter χ.
The tex there has the Greek letter chi instead of Latin x at the end and is supposed to be reminiscent of a Greek root from which we derived the word technique: techne or τέχνη. The tex there is just pronounced tech usually. The original intention I believe was for it to sound like the ch in loch or bach but that sound isn’t seen in modern English(generally even in the examples I gave). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_uvular_fricative
For all the star Trek nerds: that’s close to what the Klingon word gagh ends with. Gagh has a voiced uvular fricative, so just do the same without voice and just air and you’ll get chi.
Not to be too pedantic, the modern Greek chi is a voiceless velar fricative (or in some cases a voiceless palatal fricative) rather than uvular. The velar location is the same place English pronounces the letter k, uvular is a bit further back, more like the French r. It’s a little confusing because the IPA uses the chi symbol for the voiceless uvular fricative even though Greek doesn’t pronounce it that way. In Klingon, the voiceless velar fricative is written as H (I believe gh is a voiced velar fricative rather than uvular as well). I think the uvular consonants are q and Q. Apologies if my pedantry was unwelcome
Hey I’m regularly wrong and don’t mind being corrected.
Uvular fricative somehow reminds me of friction of the vulva.
They’re nor related, are they?Vulva or uvula?
Yes.
La-tech
The ‘X’ at the end of \LaTeX is actually a uppercase chi, so it pronounced with a ‘k’ sound.
It’s actually a ch-sound, as in Bach. But Knuth also thinks the k-pronunciation is fine.
My PhD supervisor insisted it was “Law-tex”
That’s how you can tell if someone is into latex (kink), they don’t feel comfortable calling LaTeX (tech) by the same pronunciation around people.
It’s pronounced yiff, right?
Yoosey mothers use yiff!
the people who pronounce GIF like the peanut butter.
I call it ‘Jif’ and will defend it to the death, for no other reason than I think it’s hilarious to have a very strong opinion on something so irrelevant. People get soo mad about it :D
I always like to point out that outside of the US, Jiff means drain cleaner, although maybe that’s just a commentary on the quality of the peanut butter. Although frankly it doesn’t make the acronym any less ridiculous.
The PB is spelled Jif, not Jiff.
The acronym isn’t ridiculous, it’s how the creator of the acronym pronounced it. People should be able to name their own babies.
People should be able to name their own babies.
I disagree. I think persons should name themselves. But, I understand there are practicalities that require some name to be assigned by outsiders at least until the person can talk.
For things that aren’t conscious or are incapable of speech, I think we collectively assign a name. I’m fine giving higher weight to the name chosen by the “creator” or “discover”, but I’m not fine with giving them veto power / final cut.
Did you know Dr. Seuss name is actually pronounced more like Zoyce or Soice (rhymes with voice, not moose)? And he wanted people to pronounce it correctly?
I’m actually usually unconcerned by how people pronounce things, but I think taking a man’s own name away goes a bit far.
I did know that. I don’t recall pronouncing it incorrectly since learning that fact, but I don’t talk about those books or their author frequently.
People should be able to name their own babies.
Tell that to the SQL folks.
And yes, it’s “sequel”. And “gif” like “gift”.
Tell that to the SQL folks.
I did, they say they agree with me.
How do you pronounce Porsche? Do you say “Porsh” or “Por-shuh”?
What about Volkswagen? Is it Volks-wah-gen or Volks-vah-gun?
How about Hyundai? “Hun-Day” or “Hai-un-dai”?
If you look up the ‘correct’ way to pronounce them, I bet you will get a different answer to what you thought it was. Are the former pronunciations only correct in the U.S. but when you travel to Germany or South Korea they become incorrect?
Your argument is a descriptivist one, but how do you determine which is the ‘right’ pronunciation if both ways of pronouncing a thing are commonly used?
And yes, it’s “sequel”. And “gif” like “gift”.
Interesting, so what do you think of the people in this thread who say that LaTeX is pronounced “Lay-tech”? Would the ‘right’ way to say it change if enough people started pronouncing it ‘wrong’?
Por-shuh
Folks-vah-gun
Hun-dai (approximately)
SequelMostly I was just joking around though, pronounce stuff however you want. I’m sure I mispronounce plenty of stuff. Ultimately if people understand each other, that’s good enough
So is it, go dot, god oh, or gu doh
Your argument is a descriptivist one, but how do you determine which is the ‘right’ pronunciation if both ways of pronouncing a thing are commonly used?
If the vast majority is wrong it doesn’t make them right.
Hyundai is correctly pronounced how the hell ever koreans pronounce it.
One not being korean, it’s acceptable to approximate.
Welcome to the internet, have a cookie.
The X is pronounced “tweet” apparently.
I know how LaTeX is pronounced but I always read it the same as latex.
latex-project.org says “lah-tech” or “lay-tech”
Nah. I’ve said it like the English word in my head for decades. I’ll keep doing it. Argle bargle.
It’s like those ‘kevinist’ names where it sounds like ‘taylor’ but is spelled like ‘wishbone’ or something. Just. No.
(Hush, Ceilidh, I almost have a sound argument)
If you pronounce project like you pronounce latex, you could call it “latex projext”.
I’ve always pronounced it “Lah-tekh”
They’re pronounced so differently my wife didn’t get it until I informed her that LaTeX is how “latec” is spelled
I’ve only heard LaTeX pronounced like latex in media where someone uses it to show what a geek some character is. eg, I’ve been typsetting my homework assignments in latex since I was 9.
I’ve never encountered that kind of LaTeX in media.
Wait is the TeX not short for “text”? I’ve always pronounced them the same.
The “X” is the greek letter, pronounced like the ch in Bach. Knuth explains this in the TeXbook, think TeXnician, not TeXpert.
I’ve literally never heard anybody pronounce them differently, your comment confused me at first but TIL.
They’re the same person
Can confirm
same me
Funnily, just the other day I was reverse looking up what a symbol was in LaTeX, i.e. I had the \symbol text but not the symbol itself. So I look up whatever that symbol was in text, along with the word ‘latex.’ I think the search was ‘cup latex.’ Colour me surprised when I go to ‘images’, try and see if an image of it shows up. It was not LaTeX. Not with that capitalisation
I had a similar experience looking up the code for ⊥, I didn’t realize the world has given a very specific meaning to the words “latex bottom”
Tf even is that symbol? Looks like Box-drawing characters to me
It’s “up tack”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_tack
I always pronounced it bottom because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatest_element_and_least_element#Top_and_bottom or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_type which is how the Haskell report (where I got comfortable with the symbol) uses it.
What’s up tack?
⊥
Oi, bruv. Just wanned to know wassup. No need to middle-finger me (without emojis)
Nothin’, what’s up with you?
Nun, wazup witcha?
Weird how this meme format is always ‘man nerd’ and ‘woman normal’.
Especially when you read left to right so the “punchline” should be on the right I think.
It’s Zoey Deschanel, idk how normal that woman is.
You guys should try https://typst.app/
I’ve seen this floating around a few times but am too tired to invest energy into this specific hype train. What exactly makes it stand apart from latex or markdown (then pandoced into latex)? Genuine question. I think once you’ve found your way around Latex, the major pain IMHO is whenever you apply it for a new use case and need to find out which packages to load that are not outdated. Ah, and alt text for images. But AFAIR this is already mostly solved, just not shipped widely yet.
Pros of Latex I think are important to keep in mind:
- it works since ever and for probably the rest of all our careers
- there is an established community
- the codebase doesn’t change on a whim
Pros of typst:
- It makes you happy while using it because it just works
- Packages are available in typst universe and you don’t need to install 2000 Debian packages to be able to use it reasonably because most things are just available
- There are some super cool packages like that diagrams one, or that inline comments one.
- If you have an error, it tells you what the fucking problem is instead of printing 2000 lines of crap and saying overfull hbox 200 times
- There are many templates for all kinds of purposes
- Math mode is a bit different from latex but mich easier to remember since you often just write things out. Fractions are just done with /, more complicated things are just writing the name out. It’s actually rather intuitive.
- The documentation is much better than latex, especially for the base language.
- It’s fast as fuck. My bachelor Thesis builds in milliseconds. No need to build 3 times over with each being 5 seconds.
- Like overleaf? typst.app has that too. Local works just as well though. Language server for neovim or other editors exist too.
- It’s actually programmable with variables and loops and conditionals and functions and all that if you need it.
Probably some more, just wrote a little list after waking up out of my head
Thanks for the long list! I’m not “opposed” to typst, whatever that would mean, just a bit cautious picking up new workflows/investing into skills that may become irrelevant 2 years later. But it seems that for my use case the main advantage are more useful error messages (which does suck sometimes using latex). I also see a potential new use case, if I need to use/create a new template, which can take some time with latex. The other points are not really bothering me. I write my texts in vim and build the pdf later, once the text is finished. Latex is fast enough for that.
It’s blazing fast, too, when compared with LaTeX. And another WIP feature I’m particularly excited about: HTML export.
I believe I can’t help you with this, because my motivations behind using it are different. I’ve only used latex for fun before, and now I use typst instead of regular word processor, whenever I need to create a PDF.
Love Typst, and I hope it takes off.
Wow. This looks fantastic. I remember using LaTeX and having a love/hate relationship.
Venn of this is just two concentric circles.
I love this meme because there are people who are very devoted to one or the other. And then there is the venn diagram overlap…
The local BDSM clubs male participants are like 80 % doing something IT related. The overlap might be bigger than you expect.
Please warn me of any sites with Latex so i can add them to my blocked list so i can only find LaTeX related stuff.
Well, lets start you off with this beauty (NSFW)
Anyone else have any good latex quotes? Here’s mine:
“I don’t mean to brag, but I’m deathly allergic to latex.”
“And you want to be my latex salesman.”
*/ˈlɑːtɛk/ or /ˈleɪtɛk/, but not /ˈleɪtɛks/
Feel like it’s definite cop out after someone made fun of them in the 80s
