Format Frolics
I recently ran across an article in New Scientist [Link] on the subject of the informationalization of writing journal articles. I use that exaggerated term because the subject of the article is itself ambiguous, dealing on one hand whether one uses a particular software client – MegaHard’s WORD – to express the article in ASCII, or, on the other hand, formats the ASCII representation according to a set of rules and standards associated with the appellation LaTeX. Truly, a matter of fruit salad.
At root here is the economic straits of journals. Like other print publications they are suffering the pangs of increasing costs of materials, especially paper, and salaries. Libraries are in similar straits, and are cutting back on their subscriptions with a ruthlessness normally attributed to Attila the Hun or a bishop of Rome. And since these subscriptions are an order of magnitude larger than individual subscriptions, their cancellation is painful. A spiral of increasing prices leading to more cancellations is engendered. As a result, journals are reducing staff and demanding essentially publication ready formatting by authors. The days of submitting hand written scrawl and receiving crisp print is long past.
As a result what the authors of the NS article bemoan is complicated, possibly even complex. Part of it is elitist whining, that formatting articles is beneath their exalted position in life. More reasonable may be an aspect of a distraction from the vital work of grant soliciting, if cash flow is indeed an accurate metric of scientific progress. But the substance of their declamations comes down to their dislike for both WORD and LaTeX. The claim is clearly made that LaTeX is a burden of unreasonable proportion; the corresponding indictment of WORD is tacit.
Simply and directly put, the authors’ depredation of LaTeX is dated and inaccurate. There are several excellent shells for LaTeX, in both the paid and open source environments, that put LaTeX within the scope of even the most code handicapped. And since cost is at the root of this whole argument, the paltry cost of these shells can be dismissed as specious. In no case are they substantially greater than the cost of WORD. Under such conditions we may only conclude that their reticence for adopting a LaTeX capacity is a matter of snobbery or insecurity or some other want in their character or temperament.
The indictment of WORD needs be considered, because it is unsaid if for no other reason. One of the values of LaTeX is that content and facade – formatting of output – are almost completely separated. One writes one’s manuscript: words plus figures, tables, and equations; independently of whether it will be formatted for a physics journal or TIME magazine. Only when one is done does one select the journal format. And this journal selection is inherently reversible and fungible. WORD, on the other hand, is exactly the opposite. Format and content are so integrated that generating content in WORD is a Sisyphean endeavor, a losing battle against an intellectual cancer. The limitations of the client are manifold and likely beyond listing. My favorite is that once one exceeds 75 automatically numbered equations the client becomes increasingly unstable and crashes randomly shortly after. This is only one example of why those science disciplines utilizing maths in full rely almost exclusively on LaTeX.
This leads to an actual scholarly criticism of the NS article. I note they claim that physics journals have a LaTeX rate of 0.74. Neglecting the misuse of the term “rate”, what they actually mean is an submission fraction, this is misleading since they selected journals randomly by title, ignoring number of articles published. If one counts articles published in physics journals the fraction is much higher since most physics journals will not accept anything but a LaTeX formatted submission.
But the most amusing aspect of this article, indeed, one suspects that is why it was accepted in the first place, is the contradiction of a problem of formatting caused by a program,extolled as perfection, opposed to a formatting convention that obviates the problem but is denigrated. The claim of logic amongst scientists is placed in considerable question.
