4 ms·

"Putting in some time" being the key words :)

• tel 17y ago
  Absolutely. There is no free lunch. Typesetting is a difficult job and unique typesetting is still considered a innovative profession. Latex is a wonderful tool for doing it, but you still need skill, creativity, and drive to use it masterfully. That being said, Latex defaults have more typsetting heritage influencing their design than anything WYSIWYG tool. If you can handle the tradeoffs selected, it's a fantastic default route.
  • jff 17y ago
    With LaTeX, I was able to compose and typeset a full IEEE-format paper, full of diagrams and equations, in a day. I've done the same in OpenOffice, doing part of the work in Word, and I spent half the time fiddling with the figures to get them placed decently, and in the end it still didn't look nearly as nice as the LaTeX version. I don't know many LaTeX tricks, mostly how to make sections and subsections, insert a figure, add some citations, do monospace text for code, but I can get beautiful papers out of it.
    • _delirium 17y ago
      A big drawback I find is that this sort of ease is only true if there is a LaTeX stylesheet already in exactly the format you want. Not all conferences provide LaTeX stylesheets, in which case you have a huge hassle, because the stylesheet language for making your own is terrible.
      • tel 17y ago
        I agree and disagree. TeX isn't a terrible language, but it's not a modern language either. Additionally, there's a lot of environmental complexity knowing that typesetting is a complex business. Writing a fluff template language that compiles to Sty files would be a great project.