I am learning how to typeset documents in LaTeX and I've spent much time for learning commands. I'd like to know, from experienced users, if it is a really useful tool.
Thank you,
Wherever you print the manuscript, the originality of the format of the manuscript is not deformed nor changed
Excellent contributions from both Craig and Sreenatha.
Dear Gisele,
You can follow the link below for other useful contributions from colleagues.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_LaTex_is_better_choice_than_Microsoft_Word
Not only is LaTeX useful, it is a POWERFUL tool for preparing research materials (e.g. Articles, Slides, Books, etc). As a researcher, I encourage you to learn LaTeX and I promise, you will never regret for learning it. The advantages are enormous!!
Latex is one of the powerful tool for mathematical typing. I am totally agree with @Kwara Nantomah
Latex is very easy for typing mathematical equations. In word writing and arranging equations so much difficult also mathematical equations looks very ugly . So Latex is best.
Also journals have advantages of latex they easily check the plagiarism, in word we can easily remove similarities by using commas
I will also encourage you to learn Latex, since most publishing house have their template in Latex.
You become very limited to the number of journals to publish from if you cannot typeset your paper in Latex.
It is simply the right tool for scientific documents. Enjoy this funny image
Good website about how to Creating a document in LaTeX:-
https://www.sharelatex.com/learn/Creating_a_document_in_LaTeX
Of course, it is useful and powerful tool
Latex helps you to write a document in a beautiful coordinated style. In particular, it facilitates the manner of writing equations and symbols in mathematical typing. Also many journals demand you to prepare article by using Latex.
As compared to ms-word writing in latex is easy and also save your precious time. For writing article in Physics and Mathematics particularly of applied mathematics, Latex is a power full software. In recent times majority of the journals wants articles in Latex format. On the other hand learning of latex is much easier than math type.
Alignment, formats (quick layouts - standard and professional), easy graphics, equations and symbols. Gives you a more sophisticated output. Some layouts are even those that are the accepted formats for journals and publications.
Gisele Gotardi Well it depends from which field you are coming. But there are so many benefits of latex that you will ignore all its flaws am sure.
You can type the content once and reproduce it in many different formats (article, book chapter, paper, thesis etc.) without touching the content again. All you need to change is the document style. Reference management is a quick nd easy. using the editor of your choice. its platform independent. some disadvantages i have found are font selection is difficult as compared to word and sometimes hard to find errors. Learning takes time but worth it in the long run.
Hope it helps.
Totally wastage of time, nothing new in LaTex. We can did the same using MS Word. I used Latex in 2015-16, but still I recommend Word is a better tool.
LaTeX is the best typesetting software in the history of mankind! All publishing formats are inserted inside, so users of LaTeX needn’t to know clearly any format required by publishers and its outputs are always professional! However, it is more difficult to learn LaTeX than any other typesetting softwares such as MS WORD. In my eyes, MS WORD is ugly and stupid! Using LaTeX to typeset is just like to fill in blank spaces one by one. It use linearity to express 2-dimensional objects. How to beautifully and easily typeset mathematical formulas or other scientific symbols online is still an open and difficult problem. Till now LaTeX is the best answer to this problem. In conclusion, LaTeX is the best tool, as Google Scholar is!
Feng Qi not agree with you
LaTex is bad and time wasting software.
While
MS World is designed for a layman
Everything has evolved. MS-Word fulfilled its goal, and for many it still does, but LaTeX, in addition to everything exposed by many who have responded to your question, helps the mathematical knowledge you want to write is printed in an elegant and sophisticated form, also It helps the writer integrate his reasoning into a highly structured programming language with capacities not only to generate a written paper.
For those who do not want to give up MS-WORD, there is an editor called Scientific Workplace (Mckhichan) that allows to write as in the aforementioned, but, with the ability to generate a. tex file, (this suggests that you can also generate PDF and PS files). It also has integrated various formats corresponding to the vast majority of international requirements in terms of publishing, including the generation of graphs and complex calculations made in MATLAB.
Personally I have evaluated it, and I find that saves me a 80% time working in this editor to do in MSWORD.
Greetings, from Venezuela
At Saeed Ullah Jan,
Learning LaTeX to write research papers in mathematics (and closely related fields) is a necessity, not even an option.
If you submit research papers in MS Word, the typetting will be ugly and the editors will laugh at you. Not to mention that it takes much more time writing equations in MS Word than it does in LaTeX (even though the learning curve might be steep when you start learning LaTeX).
MS Word is designed for everyone, including children, stupid man, elder man. So it is not the best for publishers. In other words, every common people can use MS Word to directly do some simple thing. It looks like that everybody can draw an egg on a paper. LaTeX is designed for scientists to produce professional output attaining publishers quality. One can use LaTeX to typeset a paper which satisfies almost all formats required by publishers easily. If using MS Word, this is almost impossible, at least this is very very very difficult, because no one know complicated formats required by publishers.
In science community, MS Word will be discarded gradually, and LaTeX will dominate scientific publishing world. LaTeX looks like English which dominates the scientific world. LaTeX looks like Google Scholar which dominates the online search world. If a scientist (mainly a mathematician or mathematical scientist) can not typeset his own papers or books using LaTeX, he/she would be far from the main stream of his own scientific field.
The Scientific Workplace or Scientific Notebook can typeset as MS Word does, but it can store the output directly as LaTeX file. By my own experience, MiKTeX is the best! Please believe that our eyes are not accurate, but machine can do accurately. Therefore, for our scientists (mainly mathematicians), we should do by our brains with the aid of accurate machine, not by our eyes with the aid of inaccurate machine. I can typeset my papers by MS Word, Scientific Workplace or Notebook, and MiKTeX (LaTeX directly). I like the latter most. MS Word is for common people, everyone can use it, but no one can use it to easily typeset scientific work better. LaTeX is for mathematical scientists, not everyone can use it, but any user can use it to much easily typeset best!
@ Feng Qi I used LaTex w.e.f Feb 2014 to Sep 2017. Just wasting my time. Nothing new there, each and everything are controlled by MS Word. Most of the editors are professor, why they laughter for writing in MS word. The actual thing is concept, either you write in word or other editor. If a Journal return a paper to me by commenting that the format is out of the scope of the journal, I suddenly think that the journal is launched for collecting money, not ideas.
So, keeping in view these things, the aims and objective of writing is not the editors you are using, the main thing is concept, ideas, addition of new knowledge to the existing one.
The power of LaTeX is insurmountable! I use LaTeX to write my papers. I even use it to prepare my slides for presentations.
@Feng Qi, relax
Strongly Recommended you for LaTex, But Recommended me for Word, As I wrote the 9th Chapter of my Book on Word.
I understand that Word is getting more powerful and LaTeX is quite difficult for people who have never written a code before. Moreover, your subject is probably psychology, which uses little to no equations.
If you want to write a short article and will probably never write for a publication ever again in your life, then it might be an unnecessary hassle to learn LaTeX from scratch. Otherwise, though difficult at first, you will get the hang of it and it will be easier for long term.
Writing in Latex can be time consuming at the beginning. However, using Latex pays off when automatic reformats are needed. Latex is excellent for quality editing, equations, tables, advanced symbol sets, and for advanced formatting of documents.
The time spent learning is not wasted time. The use of LaTeX has been gaining ground in the scientific community. Researchers in various areas: pure sciences, humanities and others, have migrated to LaTeX. It is not fashion, it is progress.
Multiple benefits can be culminated in the following points
(1)Dealing with mathematical notation. Layout and entry are generally easier using LaTeX than some other sort of equation editor.
(2)Consistent handling of intra-document references and bibliography. As of a couple of years ago the major WYSIWYG editors still had problems with re-numbering cross-references and bibliography items. This is never a problem with BibTeX or LaTeX.
(3)Separation of content and style. In principle this means that you can write your document without caring how it is formatted, and at the end of the day wrap it in the style-file provided by the journal publisher before submission to conform to the house style. In practice some of the journal publishers demand special formatting commands that partially moots this process. Furthermore recent versions of Word and LibreOffice Writer, when properly used, should be able to keep track of various levels of section heading separate from the body text, and apply uniform styling to each level. The gap is somewhat closing.
(4)Tables and illustrations. With PSTricks or TikZ, one can produce high quality illustrations within the document (though the learning curve is a bit steep there). And I've found LaTeX to be better at preparing complex tables.
It is learnt from the previous experience that
1. LaTeX should be used only for articles containing abundant mathematical equations. 2. Of course LaTeX reduces the users productivity and results in more orthographic, grammatical, and formatting errors, more typos, and less written text than MS Word over the same duration of time.
Building conform format ddatabase own publications in BiBtex, that can be useable in all publications, monographs, cv's etc... :)
I agree with your points of prof. Maged Gumaan Bin-Saad about the
advantages of LaTeX format in preparation of articles.
Strongly Recommended you for LaTex, But Recommended me for Word, As I wrote the 9th Chapter of my Book on Word.
Interesting discussion here. Is LaTeX useful for those in the life sciences tóo?
Could anyone tell me some of the advantages of LaTeX over MS Word for us in biological sciences?
Preparing article by using Latex is easy and enjoyable, especially for typing the equations, listing references, changing article's style to another,... etc
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