Technology Anyone use LaTeX?

[DrBowtie]

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Anyone use this? I have been picking it up but am not yet to the point where it is more efficient than using word.

 

[bulldog]

Anyone use this? I have been picking it up but am not yet to the point where it is more efficient than using word.

what's advantage to it versus regular wp like word, or even openoffice? which variant of it r u using? i've mainly seen it being used in undergrad calc classes that i took, and most of the fonts looked the same as the font at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LaTeX_Document_in_Apple_Preview.png . nowadays, if i wanted to do math notations, i'd bust out word, openoffice, or mathtype...much much simpler.

 

[DrBowtie]

The advantage with LaTeX is for math/physics documents that require numerous equations. As with anything using a Unix terminal your hands don't have to leave the keyboard and click around on MathType.

I also hate the word autoformat that inevitably screws up your document when numbering something. LaTeX keeps it straight better I think.

I'm learning it for a class and for 99% of documents Word is probably better but I was just curious if anyone used it.

 

[anon-y-mouse]

I'm also curious about this. I LOVE the way that Latex documents work. (as for the second poster, that was rendered in latex, not using 'latex font' or anything). I'm kind of put off by how hard it is to get into it... like, which software to download, what exactly I need... I wish there was just one package I downloaded, and it had a nice interface for me to use.

I saw a resume done in Latex and it was the most elegant thing I've ever seen. I'd love to try to format my papers in Latex and see how they'd turn out.

 

[DrBowtie]

I'm also curious about this. I LOVE the way that Latex documents work. (as for the second poster, that was rendered in latex, not using 'latex font' or anything). I'm kind of put off by how hard it is to get into it... like, which software to download, what exactly I need... I wish there was just one package I downloaded, and it had a nice interface for me to use.

I saw a resume done in Latex and it was the most elegant thing I've ever seen. I'd love to try to format my papers in Latex and see how they'd turn out.

It is definitely sweet at formatting since you can customize it down to like 2 decimal places.

Bad thing about Latex is there is too much to learn for some specific formats. My prof said most people find other people's documents and just steal their code and input their own data.

 

[bulldog]

when i asked which variant of it u were using, i meant what's the name of the program, as there are many of them available online. one i looked at was a whopping 300+ mb. To me, it actually looks someone like typing a document and coding it in html in the early 90s before the days of wysiwig editors like frontpage.

 

[DrBowtie]

when i asked which variant of it u were using, i meant what's the name of the program, as there are many of them available online. one i looked at was a whopping 300+ mb. To me, it actually looks someone like typing a document and coding it in html in the early 90s before the days of wysiwig editors like frontpage.

My prof has used a Mac Version called "TeX Shop". I dunno what version is installed on our Linux cluster.