Are questions about LaTeX documents on-topic?

Question

A few reasons to allow them:

• I recently found that there are best practices and document organization methods. That is, splitting the documents based on sections, tables and so forth and using input tag to include them.

• When I started, I often did not know the existence of particular features like "theorem" environment or the "listing" for source code. I also feel that the usage of TeX macros with "def" and LaTeX macros "newcommand" and "environment" are not obvious to newbies.

• Each prof/researcher has their own method of reducing the space wasted, creating interesting effects, generating review notes etc.

I was wondering if LaTeX documents are welcome on Code Review.

I can also see the cons of this:

• Because LaTeX in some sense is in the same category as HTML, and I am unsure if the community wants to review site designs, nor am I clear if HTML is code in the programming sense.

• Another issue may be with presentation. The LaTeX documents are typically long, with content rather than code taking up the prominent place. Perhaps it can be worked around by using placeholders for content?

• And where does the review stop? Do we correct the layout as well? What about usage of specific terms like "theorem" "claim" "lemma" etc. that non native speakers often get wrong?

What does the community think?

(Note that the intent is different from the LaTeX SE site.)

Answer 1

Yes, we should be able to review latex documents.

According to our help page, people can come here looking for the following types of feedback:

• Best practices and design pattern usage
• Security issues
• Performance
• Correctness in unanticipated cases

Out of those four, I believe latex documents would benefit from feedback in at least Best practices and design pattern usage and Correctness in unanticipated cases.

Now let's look at the questions we are supposed to ask ourselves before posting on this site:

1. Does my question contain code? (Please include the code in the question, not a link to it)

This one is subjective, but seeing that we have html and css tags, I can't see why we should not consider latex to be code.

2. Did I write that code?

Easy to answer for a latex document. Either your wrote it or you did not.

3. Is it actual code from a project rather than pseudo-code or example code?

Any language can suffer from this pitfall. Just like any other language, a user just needs to provide real code.

4. Do I want the code to be good code, (i.e. not code-golfing, obfuscation, or similar)

I am sure people would want advice on writing well-written and maintainable latex documents.

5. To the best of my knowledge, does the code work?

Latex code has to be compiled/interpreted/whatever. On top of that, assuming someone does not write a code-only question, we would be able to verify if the code works based on the question description.

6. Do I want feedback about any or all facets of the code?

Yes, there could be multiple things to catch and fix.

And based off the link @artbristol posted, it doesn't seem like a code review of a latex document would be on-topic at tex.se.