Usage of the lipsum package in answers

Question

I've notices several times people have been using \usepackage{lipsum} in answers as a space filler. While this is great for demonstration purposes when the document is going to be immediately rendered, I doubt that most users go to the trouble of copying and pasting these examples and the compiling them. Moreover, I think it is confusing to the casual user or "googler" who arrives at the site. What does the community think about this one?

Edit:

I agree that most of us will copy and paste text and compile it directly. The reason I raise the point is that on the first answer I received on this site, I saw the package and thought "Hmmm, that must be doing what I want, and I bet the rest of that stuff is filler just to make this a complete example." Fortunately, rather than jumping to insert \lipsum calls throughout my document, I looked up the lipsum package first, and then I realized what the real content of the answer is. All I'm saying is you could instead just literally type "Some filler text here." instead, or at least put a parenthetical statement at the end of your answer saying something like "(the lipsum package is just for generating filler text)". (Alternatively, you could just put %generates filler text above the \usepackage command or something)

Again, my point is not that this confuses me or even most people who would read this particular question, but casual nonmembers reaching this site from Google could end up on hour-long detours because of it.

Thanks for all of the discussion. (Also, I agree this is not really all that big of a deal; just thought I'd throw my opinion out there).

Answer 1

I usually add a LaTeX comment that mentions the lipsum package and \lipsum command simply generate filler text.

I think that providing compilable documents makes it lot easier for the reader to test the code to see if it has desired effect. Providing a complete, well-documented example often makes the usage of a macro or code more clear.

Answer 2

I guess the point of lipsum will be clear if one posts not only the source code but also a screenshot that shows the output.

Answer 3

"I doubt that most users go to the trouble of copying and pasting these examples" — I disagree. I almost always start from an example when solving a problem or debugging. Unless the way that I do things is rather different to the norm.

Also, who doesn't know what "lipsum" is, in general? If they don't, it's not a difficult concept :)

Finally, in many cases the lipsum text is added to show behaviour across pages or demonstrate a design that needs context with text on the page—I'd say it's often a necessary part of seeing how the solution works.

Answer 4

Just to weigh in quite late, I'm a not-very-smart LaTeX user and I often come to tex.SE from google. lipsum does not confuse me.

Answer 5

I agree with Will: I also use copy and paste a lot for this site. However, I only learned about the lipsum package a few days ago because it was included in some MWE. (I've known the lipsum text for a long time.) There is one thing I don't like about the package: It includes \par at the end of the paragraph, and this is sometimes undesired. With this post, it took me quite a while to understand why in the output there was so much white space between the text and the equations.