[Dogstopper]

As I move farther and farther in school, I see that many of the interns at my school use LaTeX to write their scientific papers! I know what it is and what it is used for, but how many of you all use it, and what inspired you to use it over, say, a word processor?

I cannot yet give my opinion on this matter as I have JUST started using it, but I want to hear!

[AdamSpeight2008]

Demerits of Latex. Fat Girls - Tight Clothing.
Edit: I thought it was the Lounge

[Nikitin]

I use it for everything nontrivial, like resume, homework, and research papers. What inspired me to use it instead of a word processor? Well, word processors are just a piece of crap compared to LaTeX, so I guess that =/

[Tom9729]

I use it because it looks professional.

LyX is a good way to get into LaTeX without too much trouble.

[dorknexus]

I used it to write a few tutorials on DIC. I also like to use it for presentations so I don't have to dick around with slide layout and all that crap.

[Craig328]

AdamSpeight2008, on 15 November 2010 - 02:44 PM, said:

Demerits of Latex. Fat Girls - Tight Clothing.
Edit: I thought it was the Lounge

No kidding. Talk about the most misleading and ultimately disappointing thread ever...

[annna]

The only advantage I could say is that you can type mathematical terms
But I would say there are many disadvantages, like the syntax is a bit difficult and it requires quite a amount of typing for printing small mathematical symbol.

[Nikitin]

annna, on 24 November 2010 - 09:10 AM, said:

The only advantage I could say is that you can type mathematical terms

You should learn what LaTeX is and what it does, before commenting on it.

[baavgai]

That is their experience with the package in question. Its fair, even if you don't agree with it. Why not try to enlighten them, rather than pointlessly berate.

[Nikitin]

I think it's a valid advice I gave.

http://www.latex-pro....org/intro.html

The point of LaTeX is to allow writers to focus on the content of their writing, and not the appearance. All you do is specify what you're writing, and all the minute details are taken care for you - even things like references, and numbering. Heck, you can produce a complete table of contents with all the section names and page numbers, with a single command.

Typing math, is just a small bonus of LaTeX.

[Sergio Tapia]

I'm getting tired of Words bullshit formatting. It just refuses to put things where I want it to! I'm definitely going to try to learn Latex and just create a template for my papers.

@Nikitin: That's his opinion of it, no need to be so offended and berate someone for it.

[BetaWar]

I have personally never used it, though it it all over the school's computers. From my understanding it is pretty much just a markup language for mathematical terms which can be post-processed to change the markup into symbols.

Personally, I use OneNote for pretty much everything. It is nice, organized and has the math editor that word has (in the 2010 version). For most simple things it works great, and for the more complex things (like n x n matrices) I can jump through a few hoops and get there. Now, this isn't to say I don't use word, I actually use it for all my papers I have to write. I just haven't had to write any papers since last semester

[Tom9729]

I forgot to mention that another reason I like LaTeX is because I can create fancy looking documents inside Emacs.

I don't like using Word because I always end up having to turn off auto-formatting and grammar check, otherwise I spend more time battling the stupid things it wants to do to my document than I do actually writing it.

Lately I've been using Google Docs for most of my homework, it's pretty sweet to be able to just grab my laptop and go without having to worry about transferring files, etc.

[AdamSpeight2008]

LaTeX is Turing complete so you could write games with it.

[calvinthedestroyer]

Nikitin, on 24 November 2010 - 10:07 AM, said:

annna, on 24 November 2010 - 09:10 AM, said:

The only advantage I could say is that you can type mathematical terms

You should learn what LaTeX is and what it does, before commenting on it.

I tried, but all I got was porn.

Nikitin, on 24 November 2010 - 10:41 AM, said:

I think it's a valid advice I gave.

http://www.latex-pro....org/intro.html

The point of LaTeX is to allow writers to focus on the content of their writing, and not the appearance. All you do is specify what you're writing, and all the minute details are taken care for you - even things like references, and numbering. Heck, you can produce a complete table of contents with all the section names and page numbers, with a single command.

Typing math, is just a small bonus of LaTeX.

Oh, ok. Now that's a better explanation. If I need to write something like that I would just use MSpaint

Quote

document designers? I'm pretty sure Microsoft would sue you for saying that you design documents.