The point is that those who care about doing things the "right" way (proper typesetting, semantic markup instead of presentation markup, etc.) are better off using LaTeX, but if you're only a typing a short document and don't care how it looks, feel free to use word processors (but then again, plain text would probably do as well...)

LaTeX is for preparing documents with structure. If your document is not structured into sections and so on (why not?), then yes, there is no point using LaTeX (except that it looks better!)

Nowhere on this page are presentations mentioned, so I don't know why it has been brought up, but it is indeed possible to create great-looking presentations using LaTeX, too.

shreevatsa

TeX may be great for academia and science, but .DOC (or .DOCX) runs the business world, since non-technical managers can't be bothered to learn a "language" for creating documents.

Not to mention typesettig is not appropriate for presentations and .PPT is of course all the rage.

jtimberman

What are "shout-outs"?

Capone

I'm also a convert. We were introduced to LaTeX for writing technical papers for engineering classes...it's amazing once you get the hang of it, and there's an immense online community that you can use for resources

Shamigo

The site is a bit unintuitive. Offline applications will certainly be easier to use, and I also use MiKTeX with TeXmaker on Windows. The free document "The Not So Short Introdution to LaTeX2e" (just google "lshort.pdf") is a fantastic (and detailed) introduction to how to use the language, and has enough information to both get someone started and to be used as a reference by someone who has been doing a lot of LaTeX.

costerad

For anyone else who's a LaTeX newbie, the word "learn" is only in the title of this post because downloading and installing LaTeX can be a hassle. The site has no learning tools per se. I figured there would be samples or templates at the least, but there's only a default four-line document. Searches only retrieve published PDFs (there seem to be only four of them so far, based on searches for "and" and "the"), not their source files - so you couldn't learn by example.
Finally, it doesn't seem to be working for me - I copied and pasted sample code from the PDF introductory course, and MonkeyTex said there was an error and couldn't produce a PDF. It even claimed there was an error in the four-line "Hello World!" default document!
This one is a decent idea (a TeX version of Google Docs), but it seems to need a little more time to ripen.

joelena

I'll chime in here. TeXShop for the Mac is great.

mathmonkey

TextMate is also great for Latex.

[macromates.com]

onemoreday

LaTeX is a struggle at first, but once you get used to it, you'll never want to use anything else. I'm a die-hard convert. For my Windows-based writing I use MiKTeX for the engine and TeXmaker (also available for Linux and OS X) as a frontend. I've tried a few others (though not LyX, mentioned above) and these are what work for me for both short documents and my dissertation.

Barron

I don't know how good a webapp will be; it will probably be less frustrating to use an offline app.

For those who refuse to learn the language, there is LyX.

If you want to learn what LaTeX is about, before learning it, I recommend this page.

shreevatsa

Totally unrelated, the 'author' is the same name I use as my pseudonym when signing up for crap. Rusty Shackleford is Dale Gribble's pseudonym of KOTH.

Kind of sad, but made me do a double take when I saw it.

GregH

@joelena: Installing LaTeX is not a hassle any more. For Windows users, just install Basic MikTeX (you can install any extra package later through "Browse Package") and install the frontend TexnicCenter. It's not so difficult.

As for Mac Users, there are MacTeX and TeXShop (the author also compiles a Basic TeX, which I installed in MacBook Pro). I am a new Mac user, so I don't know them well enough (especially update part and installation of a new package).

wildeny

Sweet!
As I'm using either plain text or TeX'ed pdfs for everything, I always wanted a collaborative LaTeX editor. Big thx LH!

Christoph Wagner

Thanks for the heads up to people about LaTeX. I taught this to some students this semester. They'd never heard of it (neither had the rest of the faculty). They picked it up very quickly. The key is to introduce it as markup, I think, that gets sprinkled on the plain text to produce a beautiful PDF.

fadecomic

I use LaTeX exclusively for my research writing. I have it installed via Fink and use iTeXMac (old version- a hold over since I've learned from it and want things to keep working). I use BibDesk a BibTeX program for the mac that can read and output EndNote/RIS etc. etc. files. It's fantastic for citations. The citations auto-complete for me while I type in iTeXMac (or any program on the mac side).

I've gotten into the habit of writing "for myself" small documents on each experiment run, as well as future work needed etc. These small docs are all bound together in a Levenger Circa folder with 3M tabs labelled with their names. I drag that to any meeting with any profs or technicians. When they ask: "So, what exactly is your sample like?" etc., I just flip open my typeset book, point at pictures etc. This has saved me tons of time discussing my projects with others. Not to mention it's hard to argue with a student that plops down a thick bound folder of beautiful typset work. ;)

Now that I'm starting to finish up, I can copy and paste into my ThesisFormat style for my university, hit recompile, and I'm 80% of the way to the thesis. ;) hehehe No worrying about crazy image placement or endnotes or formats for sections... all that crap.

Mac Savvy LaTeX- Since the mac can print to PDF and also crop etc., nicely within preview... you can *very* easily add line-art from your relevant journal articles. Just crop out the line-art graph etc., from the pdf as downloaded from the journal company, hit crop, then drop it into your latex file with \includegraphics.... etc. If the graph was originally in vector format, the printout and pdf will be extremely high quality. :)

Don't forget you can use various programs out there to add your latex equations straight into Keynote, etc. [or just do your presentations in latex and pdf]

(also anxiously awaiting the Stix font release for latex- will be interesting to try out!)

a11en

I'm in the "LaTeX is great" camp. I wrote my dissertation and a recent proposal in LaTeX, so I'll echo that large documents with structure require typesetting with structure. Not to mention there was no way I wanted to deal with Word when it came to figure placement. Regarding apps: WinEdt/MikTeX on windows and TexMaker/gwTeX on my Mac (although new users should grab MacTex). Yes, I know WinEdt is not free, but TeXnicCenter is, and would be my replacement if necessary.

I will say though, that in a group that predominantly uses Word, collaboration is tough (especially when you throw in reference libraries in Endnote --- although JabRef has some decent Import/Export filters). My strategy thus far is to use Latex2rtf so people can use "track changes" in Word to make edits. If you keep the formatting simple (e.g. base LaTeX styles) the output looks pretty much identical. The tough part is getting the edits back into the .tex file --- good 'ole copy-n-paste. It beats asking everyone to learn LaTeX AND version control with Subversion. Of course, I only resort to this if I'm the primary author on something. If not, I'll go with the flow and use Word --- I did get through college, and half of grad school with it after all.

turbulence