Markup languages, LaTeX

Sat, 14 May 2022 18:30:00 +0000

A markup language is a way of writing text in a format that is suitable for machine processing and often contains, in addition to the text, instructions for displaying that text. There are many different markup languages that work well for different tasks.

We will consider the LaTeX language, which is most often used for writing scientific papers. It is an extension of the TeX layout language, invented by Donald Knuth in 1978. Backslashes are used to call commands, and curly braces are used to specify arguments:

This text is \emph{in italics}.
This text is in \textbf{bold}.
\begin{large}This text is larger than usual.\end{large}
\begin{Large}This text is even larger than usual.\end{Large}
\begin{LARGE}This text is STILL larger than usual.\end{LARGE}
\begin{huge}This text is huge.\end{huge}
\begin{Huge}This text is Huge.\end{Huge}

One of the most famous features of the LaTeX language is the ability to enter complex mathematical formulas. For example, this code:

\begin{equation}
\Delta M_i^{-1} = - \alpha \sum_{n=1}^N D_i \left[ n \right] \left[ \sum_{j \in C \left[ i \right]}^{} F_{ji} \left[ n -1 \right] + Fext_i \left[ n^{-1} \right] \right]
\end{equation}

…displayed as follows:

(This expression is the title of one of Aphex Twin’s tracks.)

Because of this capability, LaTeX remains the gold standard for formatting mathematical texts, and it is not uncommon for other document authoring environments (such as Microsoft Word) to copy some of the syntax. Some programs even use the LaTeX engine as part of their work – for example, Pandoc uses it to convert documents to PDF, and Manim’s programmable animation library uses it to display mathematical formulas in SVG format.

LaTeX also has a wide standard library that allows you to use it to display pictures, graphs, code blocks, and more. Thus, LaTeX is one of the most important markup languages for scientific documents, and it is worth knowing for anyone who plans to write documents with mathematical formulas or other complex display elements.

Weekly post 19

Sat, 14 May 2022 18:30:00 +0000

This is a weekly post that is required by the rules for maintaining a personal project. This post was written on May 14, 2022, and covers week 19, 2022.

How was the week

It is impossible to provide special important reports for this week, as well as for the previous one. This is because we are now in a cycle of work that seems to be endless, and it is becoming more and more difficult to tell one week from the next.

Key insights

Macros in Rust should have a form in which, even without expanding the macro, the code represents a valid syntax tree. This distinguishes them from macros in C/C++, where they only perform text replacement.
The amount of disk space occupied by video recordings of work in progress exceeds the usefulness of these videos by several orders of magnitude. Under the current circumstances, the amount used for these videos should be reduced.
The use of Rutube - the Russian platform - in industrial activities is contraindicated, since it is not able to withstand the SLA that can be expected from alternative platforms.

Main insight

As part of this personal project, we learn how to find ways to optimize work. These methods sometimes lead to lower quality, but following the classic trichotomy of requirements, we can sacrifice this for the greater good.

What failed to do

Fairly poor progress on a robotics project that was assigned to me in an elective course. One of the main reasons for this is that the power supply of the robot consists of 18650 batteries, and the ones that are available to me are quite broken.

Work on mistakes

As before, you need to create a stable task scheduling scheme that would not be disturbed by small changes from the schedule, as well as create a backlog of tasks so that they can be effectively scheduled, delegated or postponed.