It is Hard to Imagine the Limit of Bureaucracy - Obscure Reasons Why Thou Shall Not Pass | /en/2018/01/limit-of-bureaucracy/

yihui 2022-12-17 02:05:34

It is Hard to Imagine the Limit of Bureaucracy - Obscure Reasons Why Thou Shall Not Pass

https://yihui.org/en/2018/01/limit-of-bureaucracy/

1 Comment

giscus-bot 2022-12-17 02:05:35

Guest *Jumping Rivers* @ 2018-01-31 18:09:55 originally posted:

Before I start, I should mention that I'm playing devil's advocate here because it's fun.

You analogy with code and journals isn't quite right. As a reader of the journal, it's helpful for all papers to be published in an identical style. Especially because there is no direct cost to me (there are obvious indirect costs).

As an author, style guidelines are a pain.

If I'm submitting a PR to your package, then I'm more an "author" than a "user". As the package owner, you make me do all sorts of things, such as a reproducible example of a bug, following your style guidelines, e.g. using the superior "=" to the inferior "<-", etc. These are clearly reasonable requests. If you wanted me to only use notepad ++ when writing my code, this isn't reasonable.

So it's not style guidelines, it's unreasonable style guidelines, i.e. switching a style file in latex isn't a big ask or only formatting after acceptance.

yihui 2022-12-17 02:05:36

Haha, I mostly agree with your points!

Regarding styles, I think the more fundamental problem is that currently the authoring tools are pretty bad in terms of switching styles (in particular, LaTeX). If it were as simple as choosing a single setting to change the appearance of a paper, I would have no complaints about style guidelines. Well, in fact, there is no need to have any guidelines: a style can be automatically applied to the paper, and everybody should be happy (editors and authors). I believe the only possible way to achieve the goal is Markdown, because of its strong limitations (you just cannot make a document too complicated).

Originally posted on 2018-01-31 19:16:36

giscus-bot 2022-12-17 02:05:36

Guest *Jumping Rivers* @ 2018-01-31 19:21:21 originally posted:

I want to find the person who thought that figures at the end of a submitted paper were a good idea. The only thing worse than an unreasonable style file, is an unreasonable style for submitting, then a different one for publishing!!

yihui 2022-12-17 02:05:37

Do let me know that person if you find him/her!! I think the whole world has been looking for this person.

Originally posted on 2018-01-31 19:31:33

giscus-bot 2022-12-17 02:05:38

Guest *Nicholas Tierney* @ 2018-02-01 22:14:44 originally posted:

I know someone who prefers figures at the end!