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Microsoft Word's equation editor has improved a lot over the last years. I'm not saying it meets LaTeX at its strenghts but it is very unfair to call it "hell".

by gota 8y ago

Microsoft Word's equation editor has improved a lot over the last years. I'm not saying it meets LaTeX at its strenghts but it is very unfair to call it "hell". Also, I haven't used it but newer versions recognize handwritten equations and formulae and automatically transcribe them to the equation format.

kevindong 8y ago
My experience with the Word equation editor is that it causes the entire program to stutter, hang, and lag horribly if you have non-trivial equations. No idea why. On the flip side, LaTeX definitely takes longer to write, but it's less frustrating than having to deal with Word's (well intentioned) autoformatting.
- asdff 8y ago
  That is because ANYTHING on word beyond typing, italics, underline, and bold causes that. Try importing a citation from something like endnote or Zotero, I have time to take my hands off the keyboard and crack my knuckles before I can get back to typing.
xattt 8y ago
Word 2016 and above on Windows allow the use of LaTeX to write equations. On OS X, later versions of Pages do the same thing.
- scottlocklin 8y ago
  As the proverb goes; now you have two problems. Depending on proprietary stuff which changes all the time, or even complex FOSS software with single point of failure developers (I dunno, TeXmacs or something) is a huge risk which went away when I bought a cheap Leslie Lamport book on LaTeX. Doesn't really matter if a new feature in proprietary application-X allows me to also use it with LaTeX. I can just use LaTeX! I wrote my dissertation in 2004, can still trivially use the LaTeX in it, and I sometimes do. Libreoffice, Word ... pretty sure I'd have a harder time of it. Heck Libreoffice was probably called StarOffice back then!
- zrobotics 8y ago
  I was forced to submit a lab report in Word. I'd tried to use the LaTeX feature, and I couldn't even get it to properly understand limits of integration. After ~5 minutes, I just gave up and used the annoying Gui interface, since at least it worked. This was last year, and I haven't tried again (since if I need to typeset math, I'll just use LaTeX). Word has its advantages, mostly ease of use, but it just can't handle math and bibliographies as easily as LaTeX.
  - xattt 8y ago
    I haven’t actually used the LaTeX interface in Word, though I had used it in Pages on several occaisons. I was impressed and unreasonably wished that Pages was actually a full-featured, live updating LaTeX GUI editor.
mehrdadn 8y ago
The equations in the current equation editor look very ugly. The old Equation Editor produced nice-looking equations but it was a pain to use. In LaTeX neither of these is a problem.

by gota 8y ago

kevindong 8y ago

My experience with the Word equation editor is that it causes the entire program to stutter, hang, and lag horribly if you have non-trivial equations. No idea why. On the flip side, LaTeX definitely takes longer to write, but it's less frustrating than having to deal with Word's (well intentioned) autoformatting.

asdff 8y ago
That is because ANYTHING on word beyond typing, italics, underline, and bold causes that. Try importing a citation from something like endnote or Zotero, I have time to take my hands off the keyboard and crack my knuckles before I can get back to typing.

xattt 8y ago

Word 2016 and above on Windows allow the use of LaTeX to write equations. On OS X, later versions of Pages do the same thing.

scottlocklin 8y ago
As the proverb goes; now you have two problems. Depending on proprietary stuff which changes all the time, or even complex FOSS software with single point of failure developers (I dunno, TeXmacs or something) is a huge risk which went away when I bought a cheap Leslie Lamport book on LaTeX. Doesn't really matter if a new feature in proprietary application-X allows me to also use it with LaTeX. I can just use LaTeX! I wrote my dissertation in 2004, can still trivially use the LaTeX in it, and I sometimes do. Libreoffice, Word ... pretty sure I'd have a harder time of it. Heck Libreoffice was probably called StarOffice back then!
zrobotics 8y ago
I was forced to submit a lab report in Word. I'd tried to use the LaTeX feature, and I couldn't even get it to properly understand limits of integration. After ~5 minutes, I just gave up and used the annoying Gui interface, since at least it worked. This was last year, and I haven't tried again (since if I need to typeset math, I'll just use LaTeX). Word has its advantages, mostly ease of use, but it just can't handle math and bibliographies as easily as LaTeX.
- xattt 8y ago
  I haven’t actually used the LaTeX interface in Word, though I had used it in Pages on several occaisons. I was impressed and unreasonably wished that Pages was actually a full-featured, live updating LaTeX GUI editor.

mehrdadn 8y ago

The equations in the current equation editor look very ugly. The old Equation Editor produced nice-looking equations but it was a pain to use. In LaTeX neither of these is a problem.