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.

Using Latex

[dlosey]

Haven't you seen The Matrix? Of course latex is still popular!

Oohh! .. You meant LaTeX?

Re:Using Latex

[DickBreath]

Lamb skin is more comfortable.

I'm sorry...

[phraktyl]

Ask Slashdot is reserved for questions regarding legal and dental advice. Please refrain from asking further technical questions that could be construed as News for Nerds, or Stuff that Matters. Thank you.

Seriously, I've been using LaTeX for papers for a long time, and have yet to find a format that is as easy to use (all you need is a text editor, files are in ASCII, etc.) and that produces professionally typeset output. However, I believe the real question is: does it fit your needs? If so, then it is worth learning.

Sheep gut

[elliotj]

Some people will tell you that sheep gut will do the trick, but doctors advise that only latex based products can keep out desease as well as provide effective contraceptive protection. Whichever you chose, remember to use it with a water-based lubricant.

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

If you're asking..

[GiMP]

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.

careful what you look for...

[cassidyc]

I used LaTeX for my university dissertation, and I needed to know how to insert pictures into the document....

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

Well, maybe you do, I dunno.

CJC

Re:careful what you look for...

[Electrum]

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.

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.

Re:Say what?

[zulux]

That's interesting because my colleagues allways say: hey, those letters look really ugly, you must have been using LaTeX.

I bet your coleagues think "Comic Sans MS*" is pretty darn cool if the think LaTeX looks ugly.

* Comic Sans MS is is included free with MS Office - because Microsoft Hates You (TM)

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.

Totally! LaTeX is still worth learning...

[RevAaron]

You should learn LaTeX. It is an awesome way to write documents. I've had a number of professors compliment me on my documents. They look really professional,

Why? My reasons:
#1) If you've done any HTML coding, or are a programmer in general, it is pretty easy to pick up the basics. You don't need to learn all that much to get the core of what you need to do- lists, bold/italic/underline, centering, paragraphs, tables, and some symbols.

#2) You can use tools like LyX to do the work for you. Even if you never learn a lick of real LaTeX code, you still end up with a beautiful document, and any of the other benefits.

#3) You can use LaTeX without having a GUI. Or a newer computer. Or a "full" word processor on a "full" OS. That is, you can write, compile and print out LaTeX docs on a DOS machine, from the console on a Unix machine, a PDA, etc.

I initially decided to learn LaTeX because there was a simple TeX compiler for the NewtonOS, my PDA platform until recently. There was also NewtonWorks- a good mobile Office suite- but there was no simple way for me to output the document and print it without docking with a Mac or Windows machine. With TeX for the Newton, on the other hand, I could export the text to any machine, compile the TeX on the machine itself or on the university mainframe, and then print.

I had to move on around a year ago from the NewtonOS, at least as my primary platform. On the Jornada 720, a Windows CE micro-laptop Handheld PC 2000 device, I started writing my papers using a real version of LaTeX- the same thing as I was using on my OS X machine. Editing the LaTeX code in emacs no less- all on a PDA! The whole cycle- editing, compiling, viewing (with WinDVI) and printing can all be done on a PDA. There are easy to install WinCE packages. I also had a PocketPC for a while, and the packages all worked very well there as well, but editing wasn't as nice as it was on the J720- it has a real keyboard. I've recently switched to the Zaurus SL-C760, and am a bit disapointed in that there aren't any easy to install ipkgs, along with a decent Qtopia LaTeX editor. Alas, I'll work on it soon enough- I'll need to be able to write up LaTeX docs and compile to PS before school starts. :)

#4) I had another reason, if I remember, I'll put it here!

#5) It's entirely free. Yeah, you could get OpenOffice. Or you could pirate/buy/get bundled MS Office. OO has generally just been a huge hassle for me; MS Office (I'm on OS X) is generally faster, more stable and less of a hassle than OpenOffice, but introduces its own set of problems.

Re:Microsoft Word can also do the stuff

[CompVisGuy]

No it can't.

If you work in the business world, and only ocassionally need to insert equations and don't care much about how they look, and you don't need to build bibliographies and use citations, then you can go ahead and use Word.

However, Word has a few serious problems that make it useless for academic scientific writing (people still use Word, but you can spot their papers a mile off as they look awful):

• Word has no built-in way to handle citations and bibliographies. You can use a footnote, but this is only good when you are not writing to a specific house style and don't want a bibliography. To do this in Word, you need to go and buy Endnote or something similar: you end up paying twice for a solution that is not as good as the free one (LaTeX).
• You edit Word documents visually. Most people use it to write short documents, and alter the formatting by highlighting text and changing its properties ("Hmm, I'll make this bold and make this italic, and oh, that's supposed to be a title, so I'll just make that 14 point..."). This is wrong -- the structure of the document should dictate the style, not the other way around. You *can* do this in Word, by setting up templates, but even these are flawed. This is essentially because when designing a GUI, you have to follow the 80-20 rule: devote 80% of the UI to make the features people use most often most easy, and devote 20% of the UI to those advanced features only a few people will use. Developer time and testing is also proportioned that way, so the advanced features are more poorly written and tested.
• Word does not allow you to easily make drastic changes uniformly to your document. Ever tried to renumber a large document's sections in Word? It is very easy to break things, and then you have to do the job *manually*! Changing the style of all text and layout is a breeze in LaTeX, but in Word seems to be virtually impossible. Most people don't know that equations can be written in different styles: changing styles in LaTeX is both possible and easy, doing so in Word is almost impossible (the equation editor is limited) and is a manual task.
• Word is a WYSIWYG editor. On the face of it, this is a good thing, but it has one major problem. The layout of the document changes as you type and as the display is updated. This has two significant problems. 1) You need to keep the whole document in memory. A friend who wrote a large Word document with many images in it found that Word would very frequently crash because of the huge memory demands being placed upon it. 2) When you open a document, its layout is recomputed and hence may change (because of a different internal state of the Word process or because of a different version of Word). So, I have had colleagues who have written a large document in Word, and then printed two copies at the same time. Because the internal state of the program changed slightly between prints, the layout was recomputed differently for the two prints and they looked different. This is not what one wants when you have to write a paper with "no more than four pages" -- it is easy to end up in a situation where on one version of Word you have a 4 page paper and on another you have a 5 page paper. In LaTeX, you edit a plain text document which is then parsed to form the final document (a PDF, say). The final document will then never change, and you can make as many printouts as you want. Because, when editing your LaTeX document, you do not need to keep all images in memory (they just sit on the HD), you can easily run many other programs without fearing that your document is going to vanish.
• Most critics of LaTeX say it is too hard to learn, that commands are harder than clicking buttons. However, to overcome all the problems of Word and use it properly, in order to create good documents, you need to know an awful lot. A friend is a Word user, and bought a reference book to allow him to produce documents properly using Word. Myself and another LaTeX user compared our LaTeX references with