I'm surprised to hear this claim: about equations being easy in Word. I've written long documents in both, and (1) the math layout in Word is crude/inelegant;

I'm surprised to hear this claim: about equations being easy in Word. I've written long documents in both, and (1) the math layout in Word is crude/inelegant; (2) there seems to be no easy way to change notation in Word. If you define macros for variables in Latex, you can change notation as needed by changing a couple of macros. This pair of problems has driven me away from writing any but the simplest of mathematics in Word. I've also found the symbol set in Word to be too small, but maybe with the universal adoption of Unicode this has been fixed.