Here are a couple of itches for academics that Latex scratches: 1. Templates, so you don't have to control how everything looks: If you're writing a paper, you

Here are a couple of itches for academics that Latex scratches: 1. Templates, so you don't have to control how everything looks: If you're writing a paper, you usually target a specific journal (and retarget later if rejected). If you download that journal's templates you can work on a version of the paper that looks very close to how it will be published. You can also submit a preprint to arxiv so it will be available to others in a close-to-final form while it goes through the (sometimes lengthy) peer-review process. 2. Fine control when you need it: While templates allow latex users to primarily worry about content rather than fiddling with appearances, there are still very fine controls in Latex for sweating the fine-details, and believe me, there are plenty of those that academics sweat over. There are a lot of little things that make your text robust against the tyrannies of the template. For example, say you write "For blah blah blah, see Figure 1." in your text. Latex might decide to start a new line after "Figure", leaving "1." starting the next line. Awkward! Rewrite this as "Figure~1" and Latex will not insert a newline there. If you get into the habit of doing that all the time, and many other things, you will spend a lot less time playing whack-a-mole with things that wind up looking funny. When you get good, you truly only have to worry about content. This war between not having to control appearance and controlling it utterly when it matters makes Latex both very powerful and very frustrating to newcomers. Proficiency delivers freedom to worry only about content, which is what academics really want. If HTML+etc is to be an alternative to latex, those templates need to be out there. Otherwise it's a chicken and the egg problem. Nobody has time to use HTML because it would mean developing a new template to meet their target journal's spec's and convincing them to accept that format, so nobody ever develops a template. Journals won't waste time developing templates or altering their system to accept HTML documents unless submitters are interested in submitting via that route. If you truly think you've found a superior alternative to Latex, it is up to you to pick a journal, develop templates that match their format, and get them out there so people can try them.