Is Latex Still Worth Learning?

Bocaj asks: "I have start back to college and have to write a few technical papers. Right now it's mostly physics, but I'm a CS major and there will be many more papers to come. I've tried all of the office suites with little luck in getting them to format complex formulas correctly. I'm trying to learn Latex, but I am wondering if I should. Is Latex still the defacto standard for this kind of stuff? What about SGML or XML? What is everyone else using?"

Comments

yes.

[Satai]

Physics still uses LaTeX quite a bit; for astronomy, it's the standard. Once you get used to it, you will find that it's much easier to use, and especially for formatting data -- you can reformat a LaTeX data table with sed&awk in seconds.

If you look around, many of the journals accept the LaTeX source -- I know that ApJ does, and I believe APS does. But you'll also notice that submissions to the NSF can be done in DVI format, as well. Many people still use it, and many still require it.

But, hey, if you don't like it, use something else and then convert it to LaTeX later. But I guarantee that if you start using it, you'll love it. I can't stand WYSIWIG word processors anymore, mainly because I can't be guaranteed of reproducible results.

We use it at work; I use it at home.

[cjhuitt]

At work, we use latex all the time for its ability to typeset the mathematical formulas, as well as its ability to keep track of the references for us. An added bonus is the ability to set up your own formatting commands, and have it make an index for you.

I also personally use it at home, for the ability to define commands and environments, and the ease of rearranging content. (I keep everything in relatively small files, and include those to build up the document I want. Very convenient to rearrange by just changing where the include command is.)

One thing I have to say makes it a lot more worth it at home (I use OS X there) is the application TeXShop, which makes typesetting and viewing the output much easier. I'd recommend using this (or an equivelant program on other platforms) to make the paper creation process go much easier.

For my field, yes

[jvmatthe]

As a mathematician, most journals I have dealt with recommend LaTeX. For example, two papers are in the pipeline for appearance in SIAM journals, and both were submitted in LaTeX form. To quote from the author instructions:

Authors of accepted papers are encouraged to submit their TEX files to SIAM for typesetting.

They accept papers in other forms, but TeX is encouraged.

It is because of expectations like this that I require graduate and undergraduate students write up assignments in LaTeX for my scientific computing course.

Front-ends for Latex

[fingal]

If you want the power of Latex but don't want to have the hassle of learning to write raw Latex, then you could always go for a GUI wrapper around it. Lyx is probably the best for Latex (and I would hate to go and use anything else for generating large cross-referenced documents), but if you are also interested in generating TeX then TeXmacs may well fill the bill.

Re:Front-ends for Latex

[fingal]

Not too aware of the opportuntities for hacking inside texmacs, but lyx has always had the option of using ERT (Evil Red Text) and drop raw latex into your lyx document if you should so desire, thereby not closing the door to continuing to use the tool for the 98% of the document that it handles fine...

PS

[MacJedi]

I nearly forgot: It's worth using LaTeX for the power of BibTeX alone.

/joeyo

Timeless Format

[4of12]

While I still grapple with language idiosyncracies of LaTeX from time to time, the reason I keep coming back is that it produces the best quality output for mathematics-laden documents.

WYSIWYG systems I've hated, especially when it comes time to learn yet another gui-based equation editor with yet another set of key mappings that is not like the default emacs set I have hardwired into my brain from writing code. After you learn a few of the basics in LaTeX, like $$ \int_0^\infty \alpha_i(x) dx = 5 $$ will produce a definite integral from 0 to infinity of greek alpha with an "i" subscript there's no going back.

Besides being free (speech & beer), I have LaTeX source files from 17 years ago that still produces nice looking documents on todays computers even after changing hardware, OSes, etc. There were popular word processing systems available back then were such files would be next to worthless.

That kind of timelessness in the age of planned product upgrades and binary proprietary formats impresses me.

If you want to do version control or searching of document, then having its native format in ASCII text permits the use of CVS and grep and doesn't obligate you to buy some product to see your document.

For the future, I'd like to see something like DocBook takeoff, but it's just not there yet, AFAICT.

When someone gets a MathML parser to render as nicely as DEK's code, then I'll consider moving from LaTeX.

Absolutely

[portscan]

I am a mathematics major, with research experience. All my papers, reports, and even a few physics labs I had to do have been written in LaTeX, which makes automatic section labeling, theorem/proposition/proof labeling, table of contents generation, and bibliography generation a snap. Not only have I found that LaTeX has allowed me to create truly beautiful documents, but *every* handout I have received from any professor in Math, Physics, or CS has been in LaTeX (okay, there have been a few execptions--but not many!). This includes tests, homeworks, syllabi, etc. There have even been a couple times when a professor has stopped mid-lecture to wax romantic about how great LaTeX is and how easy it makes his/her life. Every journal expects papers to be submitted in TeX or LaTeX, and every researcher in the field knows it.

As for previous comments saying that LaTeX is not extensible and that the formatting and content are not separate, that is bunk. You can write your own macros, people have written image drawing programs (for diagram generation) in LaTeX, and anything else imaginable. The formatting is done for you 99%. You just specify where paragraphs, sections, whatever start, and LaTeX takes care of the rest.

The only capacity in which SGML or XML (including MathML) is used to publish scientific content (i.e., containing lots of equations and document structions such as sections, theorems, proofs, etc.) is to first write the LaTeX, then to use latex2html (or a similar program). Seriously, it is totally impractical to write MathML yourself. take a look at some sample code if you want. It is designed to be output by a computer program such as LaTeX.

The learning curve on LaTeX is pretty low. Just google around for stuff, and it will be easy to find what you are looking for (usually). Start with the following references (there is *no* need to ever buy a book on LaTeX):

• Text Processing using LaTeX
• Help on LaTeX
• The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List

but google is your best bet. I usually just type "latex ..." into google where ... is whatever I need help on (e.g., tables, infinite series, vectors, labelling theorems, etc.). You can't go wrong. Happy TeX-ing.

Bibliographies

[djmutex]

I am a lawyer and thus not really interested in pretty math formulas or even images. I still use LaTeX for the dissertation I am working on. Aside from the obvious advantages mentioned earlier (separation of content and formatting, switching layouts, creation of PDFs, etc.), for me there is one killer feature: there is no less painful way to handle citing and bibliographies in a long document, and do it consistently.

Admittedly, bibtex (Latex's bibliography subsystem) is a bitch at first, but there is an extra package called jurabib, originally designed for supporting the awkward quoting/bib style of German law texts, but later expanded to handle about any style on the planet, as far as I can see.

Latex is old and weird, and it has its quirks, but it works best for me.