What are the different applications of LaTeX?

Question

I am in the research field and am new to the world of Tex and find it really fascinating.
I never knew about this, until I was asked to write my research results as tex files, that is in the LaTeX format.

Then I started finding LaTeX in other places too, for instance in the stack exchange sites.

I just find it as a documentation tool for documenting research work and sites like this. Other than this I would like to know for what other purposes/applications or applications does LaTeX serve?

Answer 1

LaTeX makes it possible to do so much and so much that the simplest thing is to give examples of achievements:

• handouts of exercises on paper to distribute to the students;
• 2D and 3D geometrical shapes with tikz or pstricks packages, see by example http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/tag/3d/
• transparencies and PDF slideshow to be projected on screen with the beamer class see https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/presentation ;
• 2D animations for my students with the animate package; see http://texample.net/tikz/examples/tag/animations/
• 3D animations created with asymptote that can be manipulated with the mouse, see by example http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/gallery/truncatedIcosahedron.pdf to open with adobe reader to be able to manipulate the 3D object with the mouse;
• videos or sounds thanks to the media9 package see http://www.overleaf.com/latex/examples/using-media9-to-include-videos-files/yvdwwvpknjkk ;
• create clickable and interactive PDFs with the OCG layer (package ocgtools, ocg-p, ocgx, ocgx2) see: http://mirror.hmc.edu/ctan/macros/latex/contrib/ocgtools/examples/ocgtools-example-web.pdf http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/ocgx/demo-ocgx.pdf open with adobe reader or a pdf reader that manages the ocg layers.
• tooltips with fancytooltips package see http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/fancytooltips/examples/fancy-preview-demo.pdf open with adobe reader or a pdf reader that manages the ocg layers.
• Allow people reading the PDF to add comments or annotations (teamwork, etc.) with the pdfcomment package see http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/pdfcomment/doc/example.pdf
• create PDF forms with hyperref or eforms package https://martin-thoma.com/creating-pdf-forms-with-latex/
• write books, theses to be printed on paper or digitised and viewable on PDF

Answer 2

Beside from the scientific world, where (La)TeX, as you would know, has a predominant role, I believe it has many other applications:

first of all, it's a "typographic" markup language: meaning that it has embedded by default some pretty (typographically speaking) settings. For example I used it to prepare a draft for a book, which had nothing to do with science (it was the Kalevala, the finnish epic poem), and it behaved perfectly fine.

In my opinion TeX can be viewed as a solid alternative even to usual Word Processing programs, where users have less chance to come up with an ugly output :) (I have to note that I do not use such word processing programs anymore)

Nevertheless, it's just a tool which is extremely flexible for a person with a minimum computer knowledge, but kind of scary for a newbie. I hope this aspect is improved a lot in the future (teaching people, for example, or including it by default in OS)

Answer 3

There are many applications for LaTeX. First of all, the separation of content and layout is useful for nearly every task. That's why it is used by most people who work professionally with texts. A core function is the proper display of mathematical expressions, that makes to the publishing standard in the scientific world. Another key feature for me is the possible automation. The .tex files are plain text, so you can work with them cross platform and its easy to handle them with programs.