> Word documents can be edited by people who have access to an appropriate version of Word ... LaTeX ones are greppable, searcheable, etc. They also 'age' much

> Word documents can be edited by people who have access to an appropriate version of Word ... LaTeX ones are greppable, searcheable, etc. They also 'age' much better. I can still LaTeX most documents from 20 years ago I really value the fact that LaTeX is free software, but as a matter of practical reality, are old LaTeX documents really more accessible than Word documents? There is plenty of free software with (imperfect) support for Word these days. I recently opened a bunch of Word documents that were more than 20 years old, and I'm sure I didn't get a pixel-perfect reproduction of the original document, but as someone without a strong grasp of the LaTeX package ecosystem, I imagine compiling old LaTeX documents would have been more difficult than just installing LibreOffice or uploading the document to Google Docs.