I think the LaTeX compatibility came in a fairly recent version, but the usual Unicode-based syntax is already a lot easier to type (especially on non-US keyboa

I think the LaTeX compatibility came in a fairly recent version, but the usual Unicode-based syntax is already a lot easier to type (especially on non-US keyboard layouts) and read, since it's a lot more compact and uses whitespace to separate things by default instead of requiring large amounts of curly braces.