Why should I use LaTeX?

Question

I have heard a lot about LaTeX, but never used it myself.

It is mainly used for typesetting professional research papers. But I am not writing research papers.

Is LaTeX for me? If yes, why should I be shifting from OpenOffice to LaTeX? What does LaTeX offer to normal users who use word processing softwares to make reports of all kinds?

Answer 1

Superficially, one of the advantages of LaTeX over other more traditional systems (e.g. Word or OpenOffice) is the high typographical quality of the documents that you'll be able to produce. This is particularly true for documents that are heavy on mathematics, but documents for any other area could also take advantage of these qualities.

A less obvious advantage, but much more important, is that LaTeX allows you to clearly separate the content from the format of your document. As a writer (scientist, researcher or not), this gives you the opportunity to focus on the “what”, the creative part of your work, rather than the “how” is it going to look printed out in paper (that is the work of LaTeX document class designers).

Now, you shouldn't use LaTeX if

• You don't have time to learn it. Unlike other traditional systems, LaTeX does take some time to learn. There are of course many guides and tutorials that can help you with this, but don't try to learn LaTeX if you have, say, less than 24 hours to prepare a manuscript.

• Your document is already written. Say, if you have already written your thesis in Word, there isn't much point in trying to “convert” your document to LaTeX. You can do it, but the results won't be pretty. LaTeX isn’t just another “format” to store documents, it's a “system” to help you write those documents.

• What you care about is the design of the document. If you do care about creating your own designs for your documents (rather than the content), LaTeX is perhaps not the best system for you. There are a number of packages (perhaps most notably memoir) that allow you to customize the look of your document, but things are not always straightforward. Having said that, if you are a designer, of course we would welcome your help in designing new document classes and templates!

Answer 2

I don't intend this to be a complete answer to your question, but I don't believe anyone else has yet brought up the topic of longevity. TeX has been around for over thirty years, and the underlying language hasn't changed very much in that time. Has anyone ever tried using Word 2007 to load a file that was originally written in Word '97? Even if the file imports properly, chances are some of the page/line breaks are going to be off, possibly skewing the entire layout. What if you had decided to write your document in Lotus Word Pro back in 1990? Would you be able to view/edit that document today? These problems almost never occur with (La)TeX. A document that is typeset in (La)TeX today is likely to look exactly the same when you re-typeset it 10, 20, or 30 years down the road. Since TeX is stored in a human-readable plain text file, you also have the knowledge that you will always be able to edit the file in the future.

Answer 3

There are bound to be several answers to this question, and different aspects that people highlight. I'll try to list a few. There are a number of webpages with detail on the reasons to use LaTeX: I'll highlight a few.

LaTeX is a typesetting system, not a word processor. LaTeX uses source code to generate a document: you edit one file and typeset it to a generate the output (usually PDF nowadays). This is in contrast to a word processor, where you edit the text as it appears. For a critique of word processors, look at http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html.

LaTeX does things that word processors do not do but that well-designed published material does do. For example, LaTeX uses a hyphenation algorithm which generates well-spaced out justified paragraphs. It also uses ligatures where applicable, which means that letters which 'go together' look better than if the letter design is all done separately. See for example http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex for more details.

LaTeX is intended to focus on document structure rather than appearance. Of course, some set up is needed to get the correct appearance, but once it is done most of the source you write is focused on structure. For example, there are commands such as \section for document structure rather than making everything bold, italic or whatever. This structured approach helps when you want to do things that are repetitive, as the formatting is always taken care of 'behind the scenes'.

There are a large number of add-ons to LaTeX (called packages) that are designed to help with particular tasks. Many of these have an academic focus but this is not true of every package. For example, the datatool package can be used to do mail-merging from a list of names and addresses, which is common for business documents.

Answer 4

Regarding the benefits of LaTeX, some in short:

• LaTeX provides very high quality and is extremely customizable.

• It's extremely stable, no matter how complex the documents are.

• It's free and Open Source, we can study and improve everything as we do on this site.

• LaTeX is portable concerning its implementation, your document source and its output -- all is cross-platform.

• It provides a logical approach do create documents instead of a physical, enhancing consistency.

• Your document is safe because the file format is open and there's no virus threat.

I elaborated these points in this article: Getting Started with LaTeX.

If you have questions to any of these points, don't hesitate to ask.

Answer 5

With LaTeX, you have the option to control "content" and "presentation" separate. And you should.

You might compare it to HTML+CSS in a modern webpage: the content is stored in the HTML file (pretty much everything after \begin{document}), with style tags that control what's the name of the format for the specific element, and CSS (the preamble), where you define the styles that will render your document the way you want it - with these font shapes and sizes, with such and such margins, footnotes, etc.

This way, if you decide at a later stage to reformat your document (e.g. different figure caption styles, changed headers and numbering) you would only change this in one place --- in the preamble. All occurrences of the corresponding styles will change automatically.

It's not that you can't do the same in Word or OpenOffice.org, but in these programs it's easier (and pretty much the norm) to get sloppy and just do quick manual formatting with a shortcut instead of using proper style definitions and formatting for all your document elements.

If you've ever struggled formatting a document for two or more printing medias (e.g. two journals with specific stylistic guidelines) or paper formats. If you've ever written anything over 50 pages (think master thesis), and you remember your frustration making everything "just right" --- like table of contents, index, figure and equation numbering, references --- you'd be reborn with LaTeX.

Answer 6

I will echo Leo's point, about plain-text. Programmability and highest-quality are perks, but the fact that the input is plain-text has one extremely important consequence:

You are not at the mercy of buggy word-processing software, proprietary or otherwise.

I once used MS Word happily, as this was a substantial improvement over WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, and contemporary office suites offered e.g. by Lotus. But whenever I tried to do anything modestly non-trivial, such as bullet points, it would begin to exhibit what could at best be charitably termed "eccentric" behaviour. Using Word to do anything more than a simple letter --- anything which involved a list, or controlling varying font sizes, or tables (especially tables!) --- involved for me a struggle against the software. And modern, well-meaning, open-source Office clones are even worse: in trying to reliably imitate Word's codependent behaviour, they have produced software with even more quirks against which I must fight.

With LaTeX, I can have documents which are as simple or as complicated as I like, with all of the mark-up and structure plainly visible to me, and with reliable results --- and I don't need anything more complicated than a text-editor to write the source-file to produce a high-quality PDF. Furthermore, any text-editor will do.

For this reason alone, LaTeX is excellent!

Answer 7

plain text, programmability and highest-quality output are what make me use LaTeX.

I used to think that for short one-off documents, word processors are better. But since having a wiki live right inside my text editor (I use orgmode), this is no longer the case. That is one can use LaTeX as the backend and use wiki markup as the input language.

Answer 8

1. I use LaTeX because it allows me not to think about the visual aspect of documents. I get a high quality layout, even if boring, of aricle etc. but I don't have to choose anything. Presentation may not have fancy animation but it will have 'professional look' without work.
2. LaTeX allows typesetting math easily. Really - writing \alpha is quicker then searching alpha symbol in GUI. Similary writing x^y is quicker then searching power in list of symbols. I guess with AMS packages included LaTeX have much more symbols then anything else.
3. PDF guarantees same-look on everything. You won't run into problem because the computer you're useing don't have some fonts installed.
4. You can script it (program it)
5. It is plain text, open source and highly stable
6. It is standard (at least for many CS/Physics/Math... departments). When I want to send an e-mail about math I use LaTeX because other side will probably understend (1. because it is standard but 2, because it is intuitive)
7. It has many packages that allows vector graphics (tikz for example)

To conclude.

Use it if:

• You type a lot of equation
• You like plain text, stable formats
• You don't want to bother with formatting documents

Don't use it if:

• You want to control every graphical aspect of whole document (it is possible to create custom layout but LaTeX is not designed to fine-tuning every page)
• You are afraid of plain text (however - you can use some WYSIWYG)
• You need to exchange documents with non-LaTeX people (for example someone requires doc and it's final)

Answer 9

In addition, as LaTeX is coded in plain text, you can use collaboration software like etherpad. But the biggest advantage is, that you can track all your changes with regular revision control software (i.e. CVS, SVN, GIT, ...) and revert any changes.

I use LaTeX to create high quality vector graphics and math-plots (see: PGFplots and TikZ)

Answer 10

One of the reasons I keep coming back to LaTeX is that it does things for me that would require the same (or more) amount of work in other programs. Just take a look at how much simpler tables of contents, figure and heading numbering and headers are in LaTeX, compared to the "standard" InDesign:

• Figure Numbering in InDesign (and cross-references to them)

• Multi-Level Automatic Numbering in InDesign

But so far this one is the best: Table of Contents:

• InDesign Help: Creating a table of contents

There is also no automatic list of tables and list of images in InDesign (though you can do that in Word or OpenOffice).

Why do we need a whole post on a site called "indesignsecrets" just for figure numbering and cross-referencing?

Most of the time I've spent learning LaTeX was for something I really didn't need to do, and I can assure you just with a few hours of LaTeX crash course anyone can do most of their academic work.

EDIT Speaking of being at the mercy of buggy software, I just spent a full day's work (and was paid for it) to format headings, quotations and table of contents of a thesis. Word crashed several times, making me lose a lot of work every time and forcing to begin anew, saving my file at every modification. I inserted captions for some 50 images one by one, but then Word repeatedly crashed after I had tried inserting a simple "List of Figures".

LibreOffice doesn't even open the file, and crashes every time. iWork Pages opens it but with weird formatting.

You would suppose that inserting figures with Word or Pages would just be easier with a drag a and drop, but every time text flows with figures it makes formatting both together a nightmare.

And on top of all that, I was supposed to do copy-editing work on that thesis (grammar, spelling, style etc.). I wish I just had to read and mark spelling and grammar errors, specially if it was a printed or a plain text file (and it would be easier to read and correct a plain text file on screen).

Answer 11

There is one aspect more, and not the least important one:

People, who use LaTeX, do cooperate, as you can see here in this forum, and in many other places around the web. Here in Germany in a dozen of cities users meet once per month in the evening in a bar to chat about their usage of TeX & Friends.

There are thousands of volunteers all over the world who write packages, bug reports, answer questions. Not to forget the indefatigable Karl Berry and his fellows, who issue each year a new texlive. Or Christian Schenk, who maintains MiKTeX, day after day.

The software allows to discuss all and everythink along »minimal working examples«. I've never heard about a software making it so easy to get help when you are stuck.

Use TeX & Friends for every letter you print on paper, if you like the thought of cooperation and you'd like to participate as well.

Answer 12

Even if you don't write academic journal articles, LaTeX can still be extremely useful.

1. For example, it forces you to follow certain format. Unless you know what you're doing, you can't mess about in the format. Now I don't have to worry about all those equation, page numbering, finding chapter title on one page and the content in the next page, and so on.
2. Like OpenOffice, it's free as well. But the typeset is lot better. TeX files are lot smaller than .doc or .docx file.
3. CV presentation looks lot better than in MSOffice, Open Office, etc.
4. Joy of knowing and participating in something that people from all over the world contribute to develop, use and help others to use.

Answer 13

I see two advantages to TeX over text editors and word processors: high-quality typesetting (especially for math) and the ability to automate formatting. I would not recommend learning TeX unless you need one of those things.

Things I use TeX for instead of other software:

1. Taking notes during lectures where there are equations and formulas. It is far better for this than any traditional word processor or text editor; I can usually reproduce exactly what the speaker writes on the board, and from then on it's digitized, searchable, and essentially permanent in my records.

2. Formatting the output from programs and databases automatically -- for instance, preparing a working printout of a dictionary I am compiling in a database. It is also possible to do this using text editors and word processors that have macros or similar functionality, but TeX is better suited to it because of how comprehensive it is.

3. Preparing camera-ready copy for publication. TeX produces much more closely kerned and fine-tuned print than any word processor.

People often say that TeX allows you to concentrating on writing rather than formatting. I have never found this to be true. If ``just writing'' is what you want to do, use a plain ASCII text editor or whatever word processor is near to hand and format your text later. TeX is attractive exactly because it gives you vastly greater control over formatting than normal word processors do. But that control is not cheap: TeX is time-consuming to learn as well as to use.

The exception? If you have a front-end like LyX (there are others) that can be used like an ordinary word-processor. That frees you from having to think about many of the technical aspects of TeX.

Answer 14

In my opinion, Latex is the best system to typesetting that I have ever seen. Because the quality of it's output is great. I strongly recommend you to use Latex and throw away systems like Word and Open office.

Answer 15

For me, there are two things that Latex provide many advantages over other solutions: (1) Tables & (2) Equations.

What I do requires me to produce many complicated tables (with spanning elements, different alignment settings for different columns etc.). These always cause me headache in Microsoft Word. Latex gives you more control as to how things should behave at a very micro level. It is also more transparent i.e. you see the attributes you entered that makes things look a certain way. Sometimes in MS Word, things don't look right just because of some changes you have made but not aware of. In addition, many software packages support Latex so you can paste their outputs directly into your document.

This must have been covered by other people. But equation editing in Latex is very powerful. It does have a bit of a learning curve but, once you learn some basic syntax, it is much faster to write an equation in Latex compared to MS Word Equation Editor.

Latex in general is quite intuitive if you have some basic programming skills. There are also many resources online such that you can get most of your questions answered by just putting them into a search engine.