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Is Latex Still Worth Learning?

Posted by Cliff on from the Is-TeX-still-king-for-math-typesetting dept.

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?"

2 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. If you're asking.. by GiMP · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Then you have no clue about the purpose of LaTeX, XML, and SGML. That is ok, I can enlighten you :)

    LaTeX is a set of macros for TeX. TeX compiles to DVI, TeX input file should produce the same DVI file regardless of which implementation of TeX is used to produce it. When you write something in TeX you know how it will look in the resulting DVI file. DVI is most closely related to PostScript and PDF; however, it is not a programming language like PostScript and only contains positioning and formatting information. DVI stands for "DeVice Independant".

    SGML and children (XML and HTML) are structured markup langauges. These are simply designed to store information in a human readable fashion. HTML is a slightly different format which contains formatting but no positioning information. To define positioning information one must apply Cascading StyleSheets (CSS). CSS adds the ability to format and position the text in said markup languages; however, CSS is device dependant.. the result will format/position differently depending on the device/medium on which it is presented.

    Thus, if you wish to have your paper look the same regardless of the device it is displayed on; such as for a book, magazine, etc.. then DVI, PDF, or a subset of PostScript (some features are device dependant) will be perfect. If you're looking to display this information across a wide range of machines and faciliting accessibility features such as those used by the blind or the deaf, XML/HTML would be preferrable.

    One other mentionable is that the LaTeX macros for TeX really speed and facilitate the process of writing books and research papers by requiring the creation of chapters, sections, and paragraphs. BibTeX will aid in automatically creating a bibligraphy, and LaTeX can automatically create your Table of Contents. Additionally, LaTeX can be easily converted to HTML.

  2. Re:careful what you look for... by Electrum · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Lets just say that you don`t want to Google for "+latex +pictures"

    Not to ruin a good joke, but actually, the first result is exactly what you want.