I am in constant search for an alternative to LaTeX, but it seems I am stuck for it for a long time, and I am trying to see the bright side of it.
The other day one thought struck me, I think, LaTeX is missing many reasonable defaults, especially math environment. For example, it is very unlikely that you have three variables named
g at the same time, and you are writing product of those three variables in that order. But still you have to write
\log to indicate you meant the function
log(). In other words, when someone writes
log, they (almost) always mean the
Same is true for parentheses and braces, in math environment when one uses a parenthesis again they most probably mean a
\left(. I know, I can introduce my own
\( commands but again they are not by default.
Because I am using LaTeX mostly for math typesetting, I am only aware of those kind of non-defaults. My question is why are the things are not designed such that these most basic, fundamental things are not handled by default? I read that Knuth is considered math typesetting specialist, he should have noticed these burdens while he is using TeX in my opinion.