I generally agree with what you say. Four things though:
- I have found that learning how to write simple macros can simplify writing LaTeX significantly. If you dislike how you have to write the same five invocations in every figure, just make that a macro. \newcommand is easy enough to learn. Treat your LaTeX like you treat any other programming task. Build abstractions, refactor.
- I recently switched from pdflatex to lualatex. Now I can write "macros" in Lua. This finally enables me to write complex stuff, like a LaTeX environment that converts markdown to LaTeX, or some fancy table editing stuff. I can now bring to bear my regular programming skills on LaTeX code!
- There are a few data formats that convert cleanly to LaTeX. I actually write my documents in org-mode, which is then converted to LaTeX. While this sounds like a recipe for disaster, it actually works great because of two properties: One, you can always write plain LaTeX inline in your org-mode stuff, which will be copied verbatim into the resulting document. Two, the resulting LaTeX code is clean enough to just switch over to using that in case something catastrophic happens to org-mode.
- There actually is one very viable alternative to LaTeX: HTML. HTML5 and CSS3 in particular introduced very comprehensive support for paged media and there are a few excellent HTML-PDF exporters available out there. Just imagine how much cooler it is to write plain HTML, and take care of all the formatting in CSS. This also enables the use of preprocessors like Markdown, and Javascript for programmatic content (like MathJax for equations). This really works, and it works today. The effort to write beautiful documents remains high though, on a similar level to writing beautiful LaTeX documents.
- I have found that learning how to write simple macros can simplify writing LaTeX significantly. If you dislike how you have to write the same five invocations in every figure, just make that a macro. \newcommand is easy enough to learn. Treat your LaTeX like you treat any other programming task. Build abstractions, refactor.
- I recently switched from pdflatex to lualatex. Now I can write "macros" in Lua. This finally enables me to write complex stuff, like a LaTeX environment that converts markdown to LaTeX, or some fancy table editing stuff. I can now bring to bear my regular programming skills on LaTeX code!
- There are a few data formats that convert cleanly to LaTeX. I actually write my documents in org-mode, which is then converted to LaTeX. While this sounds like a recipe for disaster, it actually works great because of two properties: One, you can always write plain LaTeX inline in your org-mode stuff, which will be copied verbatim into the resulting document. Two, the resulting LaTeX code is clean enough to just switch over to using that in case something catastrophic happens to org-mode.
- There actually is one very viable alternative to LaTeX: HTML. HTML5 and CSS3 in particular introduced very comprehensive support for paged media and there are a few excellent HTML-PDF exporters available out there. Just imagine how much cooler it is to write plain HTML, and take care of all the formatting in CSS. This also enables the use of preprocessors like Markdown, and Javascript for programmatic content (like MathJax for equations). This really works, and it works today. The effort to write beautiful documents remains high though, on a similar level to writing beautiful LaTeX documents.