4 ms·

I don't get it. In my opinion LaTeX is very good to use iff: - your document is large (paper sized) or - your document requires the use of LaTeX's math typese

by DCKing 13y ago

I don't get it. In my opinion LaTeX is very good to use iff: - your document is large (paper sized) or - your document requires the use of LaTeX's math typesetting Why else would you go through the pain of using LaTeX when: - with only very few exceptions all templates 'suck', i.e. they show some lack of sophistication even to the untrained eye (including this one) - customizability is hard to get, which makes it hard to stand out (want to use a special font? good luck!) - controlling you document layout is a pain (want to have your picture appear in a fixed place? good luck!) I'm genuinely curious why people choose to use LaTeX as a tool for this. If your word processor doesn't suit you, HTML+CSS, Scribus or InDesign appear to me as far superior. For the same reason, I'm curious why people continue to use LaTeX for presentations that don't require special LaTeX features like math or tikz. Can someone explain this to me?

arebop 13y ago
LaTeX is good if you want something typeset well, and either you want to use free software or you want to version-control the document. Customizability and control are really not hard to achieve in LaTeX. That's not to say that it's easy to wield the control you have; it may not be intuitively obvious which abstractions to use or disable, but you can in principle accomplish anything, and your results will be stable. Unlike with a word processor. InDesign admittedly is a great typesetter and an intuitive GUI. Sure, LaTeX is good at dealing with various paper sizes and it has great math syntax. But fundamentally it's just a superb typesetting system that takes plaintext input and that you can use, learn from, modify, and share.
tjr 13y ago
After using LaTeX (and similar tools) for some projects for which it is very well suited, I have come to prefer the LaTeX workflow over a GUI word processor, and I personally like the appearance of many of the defaults. HTML+CSS is fine also, if your goal is to have an HTML document. I write more HTML than LaTeX.

by DCKing 13y ago

arebop 13y ago

LaTeX is good if you want something typeset well, and either you want to use free software or you want to version-control the document. Customizability and control are really not hard to achieve in LaTeX. That's not to say that it's easy to wield the control you have; it may not be intuitively obvious which abstractions to use or disable, but you can in principle accomplish anything, and your results will be stable. Unlike with a word processor. InDesign admittedly is a great typesetter and an intuitive GUI. Sure, LaTeX is good at dealing with various paper sizes and it has great math syntax. But fundamentally it's just a superb typesetting system that takes plaintext input and that you can use, learn from, modify, and share.

tjr 13y ago

After using LaTeX (and similar tools) for some projects for which it is very well suited, I have come to prefer the LaTeX workflow over a GUI word processor, and I personally like the appearance of many of the defaults. HTML+CSS is fine also, if your goal is to have an HTML document. I write more HTML than LaTeX.