I disagree (or maybe because I don't fully understand your comment). In my (limited, I'm not a FE dev) experience, you layout an HTML page by hand but I do not

I disagree (or maybe because I don't fully understand your comment). In my (limited, I'm not a FE dev) experience, you layout an HTML page by hand but I do not want that with a research paper. I want to write my paper and let LaTeX lay it out for me. Of course I'll have to wrestle with an unruly table or figure now and again but for the most part, the layout and typesetting of the document is handled for me.