LaTeX agrees very well with people who are used to deal with abstract concepts. You don't see the final result when you write a document, but rather describe the document structure - not the formatting itself - in a markup language. A program, a compiler if you want, then transforms this document structure into a formatted document.

For people who have programming experience or who work with markup languages like HTML it is very easy to learn. For those people it gives publications of professional quality much quicker and easier than Word right from the beginning. For others it may take a bit longer to get accustomed to the concept. Most people that I know get better results with less time and effort once they have learned some basic principles of LaTeX.

LaTeX is based on a plain text format. That means everything that influences how your document is formatted is directly visible and editable as text. There are no hidden properties or nested menus, just plain text. You can often copy and paste some example for a more involved formatting from somewhere, play with it, and see what it does. Bit by bit you expand your "personal library" of code examples and older documents that you wrote and learn to solve problems quicker and quicker.

The layout and typesetting of documents that are formatted with LaTeX are of very high quality. It is nowadays possible, but difficult to achieve such quality with word processors. Not too long ago it was simply impossible. LaTeX is also very stable and reliable software. The base of LaTeX, TeX, can be considered 100% bug-free. LaTeX runs on many platforms, including Windows, Linux and OS X.

LaTeX is furthermore free software, that means it is free to download and install, and you can even obtain, modify and republish the source code under certain terms and conditions. People can implement features that they need and then publish the changes for everybody to use. A huge number of packages for diverse purposes is available for download from a central repository, CTAN, and is packaged in free LaTeX distributions like Texlive.

This means you can do a lot of things in one document without paying anything or even installing third-party software. And if you give a document that needs a certain package installed to someone, this person can simply download and install that package without hassle. This contrasts to Word, where certain features, like reference management, depend on commercial software like Endnote. You are also very flexible how you set up your working environment. You can use your favourite text editor, your favourite program to generate graphics and your favourite reference manager (as long as it supports BibTeX).

In conclusion, I think that LaTeX is ideal for scientific literature like articles or books. Word processors are better to write letters or memos that are not to be widely published, generally for "quick and dirty" jobs.

LaTeX agrees very well with people who are used to deal with abstract concepts. You don't see the final result when you write a document, but rather describe the document structure - not the formatting itself - in a markup language. A program, a compiler if you want, then transforms this document structure into a formatted document.

For people who have programming experience or who work with markup languages like HTML it is very easy to learn. For those people it gives publications of professional quality much quicker and easier than Word right from the beginning. For others it may take a bit longer to get accustomed to the concept. Most people that I know get better results with less time and effort once they have learned some basic principles of LaTeX.

LaTeX is based on a plain text format. That means everything that influences how your document is formatted is directly visible and editable as text. There are no hidden properties or nested menus, just plain text. You can often copy and paste some example for a more involved formatting from somewhere, play with it, and see what it does. Bit by bit you expand your "personal library" of code examples and older documents that you wrote and learn to solve problems quicker and quicker.

The layout and typesetting of documents that are formatted with LaTeX are of very high quality. It is nowadays possible, but difficult to achieve such quality with word processors. Not too long ago it was simply impossible. LaTeX is also very stable and reliable software. The base of LaTeX, TeX, can be considered 100% bug-free. LaTeX runs on many platforms, including Windows, Linux and OS X.

LaTeX is furthermore free software, that means it is free to download and install, and you can even obtain, modify and republish the source code under certain terms and conditions. People can implement features that they need and then publish the changes for everybody to use. A huge number of packages for diverse purposes is available for download from a central repository, CTAN, and is packaged in free LaTeX distributions like Texlive.

This means you can do a lot of things in one document without paying anything or even installing third-party software. And if you give a document that needs a certain package installed to someone, this person can simply download and install that package without hassle. This contrasts to Word, where certain features, like reference management, depend on commercial software like Endnote. You are also very flexible how you set up your working environment. You can use your favourite text editor, your favourite program to generate graphics and your favourite reference manager (as long as it supports BibTeX).

In conclusion, I think that LaTeX is ideal for scientific literature like articles or books. Word processors are better to write letters or memos that are not to be widely published, generally for "quick and dirty" jobs.

Latex is very good for writing paper. if you have more mathematics formula, you can write easier. And latex is free...

Libre Office is also free. Personally I prefer Office because it gives possibility to work in groups (I think that today scientists work rather in groups). In Office you can put some notes, comments, corrections. Is that kind of functionality in LaTeX? I heard that LaTeX is better for editors than authors. Is it true?

Jakub, LaTeX can be used very well together with a source control software like git or svn. Those tools are designed for collaborative work in large groups.

Comments can be added to the LaTeX source. Changes can easily be formatted individually by the different authors by defining a simple custom LaTeX command:

in the preamble:

\newcommand{\johndoe}[1]{\textcolor{green}{\textbf{#1}}}

in the text:

\johndoe{I wrote this!}

This portion is then printed bold with green letters.

Comments can also be added to the generated PDF if someone is not so familiar with LaTeX.

I am an author, and I simply love LaTeX! But that does not mean it's the right tool for everybody. Just use what works for you!

Could you recommend any LaTeX editor for Windows?

I use TeXnic Center. In combination with sumatra pdf you have the possibility to do forward and backward search (click in the source to jump to the same position in the pdf and vice versa)

LaTex is a tradition. It is the last torment a graduate student must endure before having her or his dissertation or thesis accepted. The argument is that it is good for formatting equations. So is MathCad.

I looked at TeXnic Center and I'll stay with Libre Office :). I still claim that LaTeX is good for editors not for authors. This jumping between views is not very comfortable. But I must admit that equations editor in Libre Office is very similar to this in LaTeX.

This topic is like religion--no one will really be converted and the best advice is to try things out, keep an open mind, and ask for guidance from the believers. I am a confirmed atheist about religion but have found LaTeX to be a very powerful tool over 25 years of regular use.

www.sci.utah.edu/~macleod/latex.

I would say, if you wanna create a larger document (like thesis, dissertation) LaTex is definitly better, and you need time to learn it. For smaller document like 1-page stuff Word is better.

To complement this discussion I have posted another Question: "Why word processors?" https://www.researchgate.net/topic/Engineering/post/Why_Microsoft_Word_or_LibreOffice_OpenOffice

Jakub, now that you have tried LaTeX, maybe you can share what you like about LibreOffice? I guess I'm strongly biased in favor of LaTeX because I never seriously used LibreOffice or Word for scientific writing. I'm curious and I am often asked for advice in such matters. Therefore I'd like to know what are good reasons and use cases for word processors.

The main issue here is that both, MS Word and Open/Libre Office, are not meant to typeset scientific documents. All the professional involved in the writing of scientific documents need to understand the difference between "word processing" and "typesetting" and why they are more suitable of different situations, i.e. if you need to write a paper you might prefer to use LaTex because, once you feel comfortable with it, because it offers better tools to manage references, equations and figures, and due to it also makes it possible to create high quality documents. If you need to write a technical manual/report or a technical procedure it would be easier and faster to use a word processing tool as MS Word (which I like the most).

I have worked my M.S. Thesis using LaTex and Winedt as the development environment. It was organized in chapters, added as input to a main .tex file. All the references were managed using Bibtex/Jabref. Almost all universities have LaTex templates for their Thesis. For the equations I have used Mathtype 6 with the option of copying the Latex2e code. For almost all figures I have used MATLAB, saving them in .eps format. For the flow chats I have used MS Visio, saving the files as .emf and then converting them into .eps without losing image quality. For the Tables, I have used an excel macro called Excel2Latex.

I do not consider myself as a LaTex expert, but I have managed to integrate several tools that were familiar to me in order to create nice and clean LaTex papers and my M.S. Thesis.

LaTeX deals very well with a professional preparation of articles. Excellent on handling maths, most appropriately advanced maths and page size, as well as detailed figures etc. Loads of support from the community, many packages from which you can choose... However, if you would like to prepare very simple or simplified articles, then stick to Office. Also, another useful LaTeX related program is Lyx, runs both on Windows and Linux. Hope it helps.

Hi, I am also a LaTex fan, unfortunately I think the editors for Mac are more convenient than for windows (at work I use windows, private Mac); still my recommendation for windows is texmaker, and for mac texshop is really cool.

I recently had to write in word, while my statistical results have been produced via Sweave in R; word is really, really awful what regards formula typing, handling of figures and tables, also the numbering to equations, tables and figures is cumbersome, finally you can create for tex a database that contains references to the literature you are specialized in; with this citations in latex are very easily done, in word you always have to control after you have finished your paper whether you really have cited all studies that are listed in your reference section....so tex is really the better alternative for scientific publications

LaTex is a great environment for writing articles, books and documents that use mathematical notation or equations. I find that the program displays mathematical notation better than word or other word processing programs.

I agree that quick letters or memos could be done in a word processor but for more technical documents I would recommend LaTex. Once you get the basics it's a brilliant tool. Referencing and labelling is much easier in LaTex too

The only valuable answer to me is: automation. You can automatize many tasks because LaTeX is actually a programming language. All the other features can now be addressed by many other software.

I used Eclipse with latex plugin and versioning. It was kind of hard in the beginning but in the end this time invested paid off. As time passes you concentrate more and more on the content because the formatting is already done.

In my opinion, let's say it in simple words:

- Word for notes and Documents ( works only if you don't edit the content before this object

- editing Lists (works not always)

- ...

LaTeX problems imho:

- tables (very complex -> include exported xls as png)

- check spelling (you have to include an open dictionary in your LaTeX editor)

- has to compile (no WYSIWYG)

- you need to configure a lot to start "writing" in TeX:

--> PDF Viewer

--> TeX itself

--> TeX editor

--> get dictionary for spelling check

--> get template (you cannot simply start editing...)

The first thing is that is free!! I use LaTeX for long documents and when I want to include a lot of mathematical expressions.

A lot has been said, but as someone who has experimented with many different kind of programs to write documents (and to make figures), I would like to add a few points:

> Every time you start a new document in LaTeX (if is not like the ones you prepared before), you will most likely use up more time to customize your document. Then however, the document is very 'stable' meaning easy and fast to use -- last minute changes are absolutely no problem even for large documents. Thus you save time close to your deadline.

> LyX was mentioned as an Editor in which you can view LaTeX just like Word or similar. I do not have extensive experience here. This might be useful for LaTex Presentations, too (Beamer Class - outputs high quality PDF presentations). In plain LaTeX presentations I find the positioning of pictures annoying without a direct feedback through a viewer. A good place to start!

> LaTeX always produces PDFs (Portable Document Formate). I have seen so many distorted Power Point Presentations becasue of system incompatibility. This does not happen here!

> LaTeX is very compatible.

1) You can import graphics from open source programms like Inkscape or jpicedt and get best quality vector graphics as well as text in figures directly imported and formated to fit your document!

2) You can use your literature system (e.g. Mendeley) together with BibTeX to get high quality and very flexible citation results.

3) It works on most systems (once you went through the elaborate installation)

> LaTeX documets have many helpful and easy to use professional features (as well as a lot of online help). It is for example very easy to set your document to be an interactive PDF. This is a great help for reading digital documents. All you have to do is include another package in your settings - done. All your tables, citations and references are linked and can be cklickt apon.

> LaTeX has a very nice layout and typesetting compared to almost anything. Even though Word (not jet LibreOffice) improved a lot it did not catch up. I admitt it needs a trained eye to see the differences (I reccomend a LaTeX course). But for most people "it just feels better" (frinds of mine made a text and LaTeX did impact there lab course grades positively). Also LaTeX has a set of very highly develloed vector graphic fonts (Computer Modern family) that are not available in Word &co.

> Creating tables in LaTeX is more difficult but also more powerful. You are not temped as much to use 'bad' design elements that distract from your content. However there are plugins like Excel2Latex to help you.

Conclusion: Even though it often takes more efford - the high quality is worth it for any kind of publication and if you want to avoid layout problems before deadlines.

One more comment: There is an interesting sideeffect of LaTeX: Because you have to think about what exactly you are doing, the layout and content of most documents improve automaticaly. Also all TeX guidelines contain professional best practise examples and comments on how text documents should be set up. Without LaTeX, I would perhaps never have bothered to look into it.

LaTeX is free and available for all platforms, meaning MS Windows, all

flavors of Linux and MacOS. It is a bit complicated if you want to use

an appliance such as the Apple iPad (remote compilation required).

Although I am not heavily published, my research is mathematical and

algorithm based with the usual 20+ citations, references, tables and

figures. I use LaTeX for all authoring and for me, is superior to MS

Word for lengthy, complicated, collaborative documents. Some users

use PS and DVI file output, but LaTeX is easily configured to produce

PDF documents.

The winning point other than cost is how readable your formulas

and matrix equations will be in LaTeX. Typically, authors use

variants of LaTeX2e with journal specified style sheets (*.cls files),

i.e. Lecture Notes in Computer Science; use "lncs.cls" in the preamble.

For slides, Prosper is easiest to use, but Beamer is outstanding and

is far superior to MS Powerpoint, since your formulas, figures, tables

and equations can be posted without distortion and precisely in the

manner you intended for presentation.

In summary, its free to use and once configured you will have

publication quality results every time with some extra effort.

LaTeX programming is fun because you can automate routine manuscript

writing tasks of your own including BibTeX reference management and

slide preparation, with the aid of other scripting language like Perl,

Phython, Ruby etc. I hope my papers help you to see what I mean to

say, although my approach is old fashioned;-)

S. Todoroki and T. Konishi: ``BibTeX-based manuscript writing support

system for researchers'', The Asian Journal of TeX, 4, pp. 121-128 (2010).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/210002746_BibTeX-based_manuscript_writing_support_system_for_researchers

S. Todoroki: ``Beyond standard slideware: Audience-oriented slide

preparation using LaTeX and scripting language'', The Asian Journal of TeX,

3, 2, pp. 109-118 (2009).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/200662781_Beyond_standard_slideware_Audience-oriented_slide_preparation_using_LaTeX_and_scripting_language

These are freely downloadable from http://ajt.ktug.kr/

Article BibTeX-based manuscript writing support system for researchers

Article Beyond standard slideware: Audience-oriented slide preparati...

We may write something which MSword is not able to write.

This is a question that everyone who has heard about LaTeX asks. The short answer is that you will want to use LaTeX if you want good-looking documents. The complete answer has several parts. Let me elaborate.

For one, most word processors cannot, I can say, virtually no word processor can, handle mathematics effectively. Mathematicians need a large variety of symbols and kinds of equations, of which only a small part can be handled by word processors. TeX was created primarily to handle mathematics by someone who was both a mathematician and a programmer. Not only does it handle mathematics very well, it handles it in a way that no other piece of software can. LaTeX (it is properly written this way) is a set of macros that makes it easier to create documents with TeX. The name "TeX" basically comes from the term "technical" and indicates its importance in creating technical documents.

TeX was designed to take into account all existing conventions in priting so that documents created with TeX come out looking like professionally typeset ones. TeX leaves the author to concentrate on the content and leave the job of formatting to the computer.

TeX can do several things that ordinary word processors find difficult or even impossible. As a TeX expert said once, "With a word processor, one finds out what can be done and does just those things, while with TeX, one decides what to do and finds out how to do it!". Needless to say, TeX automates many things like cross-referencing, indexing, generating tables of contents, tables of figures, etc. It can automate citing of references in the body of a document and listing them at the end in the proper format, which is especially useful for researchers who wish to send articles to scholarly journals for publication. Scientific journals are increasingly using TeX for typesetting, so that they are increasingly asking authors to send their articles created using TeX.

Latex give the many facilities likes mathematical symbols, special notation etc. Which take a lot of time in other document software like MS office. When you habitual to use Latex I think its seem very easy.

Comparing LaTeX with word processors is like compating apples and bananas. The article at ::

http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html

summarises the reasons why word processors are "stupid and inefficient". Worth reading.

partha

One more reason to use LaTex is that most of high-level journals in Physics and Mathematics use LaTeX in editorial process. If you submit your paper in LaTeX format (better to use plain LaTeX, without special "home-made" commands) you can get waiving (e.g. in PRL) or even discharge (e.g. in PRB ) of the paper charge. These journals propose their LaTeX templates for publication and this guaranties you the minimal number of misprints. LaTeX is also very useful for those who is teaching. If you use Beamer you can prepare your lecture notes and slides in one document. In this case it is also very convenient to use masterdocument, so, you can collect your lectures one by one withiout troubling of numeration, cross-references etc.

I also use LaTex adventages such as formula writting (impossible with MS word) have already been told so let's complete:

-Submission in LaTex accepted by several editor (Elsevier even provide their template)

-High quality layout (profetional quality)

-In some case LaTex Document or part may have been autogenerate

-The structure of LaTeX allow you to organized your document in a way you can read and work easilly (particulary appreciable for Dyslexic poeple like me)

-It's free

Other thing very important, a LaTeX document will be open by any LaTeX software, and in 20 years it will still be suitable.... wherease office documents do not open in a similar way on every computer, and your doc will be F..ed up when you will get a new computer with a new version of office....

In addition to all of the above, LaTex also handles figures very well. It manages figure numbers and references to those flawlessly, something that cannot be said about word processors. It also is exquisite at handling EPS figures, the most versatile format coming out of technical computing tools such as Matlab. This allows direct access to any figure element at later stages, e.g., you can change labels, etc. without having to re-plot. There is no loss of resolution, as EPS is a vector format.

Latex's reference handling is excellent, you can distinguish between references to figures, chapters, sections, etc, as you are able to give each element in a document a custom label - much better than looking up reference numbers all the time. The same is true for citations.

LaTex has come a long way in ease of use over the past few years. Now you can find full distributions with all necessary tools and packages to get started for Windows (MikTex) and Mac (MacTex).

To get started with LaTex I highly recommend the 'Not so short introduction to LaTex', google it, it's about 90p pdf doc floating around the web.

I love LaTex. It might be a bit difficult to get the idea at the beginning, but once you master it, you will see how much it can save up your time in linking the graph, tables, and references to your main text. And this is especially useful for writing long thesis. Have a try for those who had never use it before.

There is much difference between ms word and LaTeX. When we write in word, we concentrate in research and type setting but when use LaTex. we can concentrate on our research. LaTeX also has beautiful equations, nice index, table, figure and so on. The best is we can modify it because LaTeX is opensource.

In e.g. MS Word you tell HOW to make your document nice, whereas in LaTeX you say WHAT you want to have in the document, and LaTeX makes it nice. :)

I use LibreOffice (former OpenOffice). I my opinion it is a very good software for both scientific and nonscientific publications. I believe that all problems mentioned by LaTeX funs are related to low knowledge about Libre/Open Office environment. I wrote many publications and Ph.D. Dissertation, with mathematical formulas and complex structure, without any problem.

LibreOffice has a styles system which allow for control of the text structure. So user can automatically generate lists of contents, tables or illustrations. Using the style user (like in LaTeX) may don't care about final layout.

The way user creates and edits mathematical formulas is similar to that in LaTeX - and I didn't meet (up to now) any formula that couldn't be wrote in LibreOffice. There is also converter between Latex and Libreoffice math (http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center/texmaths-1/releases/0.36).

For bibliographic purpose there is a special tool in LibreOffice but user can also useplug-ins for external tool like Zotero.

Last thing - illustration as a vector graphic. I create vector graphic in the LibreOffice Draw module and then I copy it to Writer so illustration is still vector type and there is no problem with resolution (even after export to PDF). I also use Matlab and I don't find any problem in the insertion of the Matlab figs (as metafile - vector graphic) into a text.

The main disadvantage of LaTeX (for me) is problem with group working (correction, reviews etc) and necessity of switching between views (or you have to read the text with metalanguage phrases). I believe that LaTeX is similar to HTML with CSS so everyone how created one bigger WWW page known how "convenient" it is.

There is also converter between Latex and Libreoffice (http://writer2latex.sourceforge.net/).

I like LaTeX because it is easy to edit formatting as long as you put in line breaks where you needed them, it seriously lets you do ANYTHING you want in your document as far as symbols go, there are a ton of packages to get more options, it's free and open source, and lots of journals use it. It's a good combination.

Apart from the quality of the results, from my point of view, one of the main advantages of LaTeX (although other people can think differently) is that the source code is just plain text and the compiler is free. This means that you can modify a LaTeX file in any computer with your favorite text editor and you can compile any LaTeX file. I'm tired of having to deal with MS Word documents whose layout change even using different versions of MS Word (no talk about using OpenOffice/LibreOffice). In addition, plain text files are much smaller.

Then, there is the fact of being tied to a vendor (Microsoft) and force other people to buy licenses to the same vendor to allow to view or modified your manuscript. I don't mind if people decide to pay for using there own software, but I can't stand to be forced to use it, specially in official documents (but this is another discussion :D )

Cheers!

Thanks Partha. The article is indeed an eye-opener.

There are a number of good justifications that recommend LaTeX over other word-processors. I hereby appreciate all.

http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html

LyX is a WYSIWYM ("what you see is what you mean") editing processor built over LaTeX. Have a look in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LyX

The biggest advantage is if you need to update/re-insert all your figures. Lets say your supervisor or journal reviewer doesn't like the units the axes of your graphs are in. In Word you might have to go through the whole document, find each figure, right click and replace it with the updated figure. In Latex, you'd be able to run a "find and replace" on the text file and update all your paths to the new figures paths (straightforward assuming you use an intelligent naming system), then recompile and bingo you're done.

LyX generates the LaTeX code from the WYSIWYM text entered by you. It uses its own native LyX format to do this. This approach has its own weaknesses. LyX generated LaTeX code is usually filled with unnecessary LaTeX fluff. It is not easy to tweak the LyX code to add your own LaTeX code. There are other IDEs which avoid such unnatural tendencies -- Kile, TeXMaker. the LaTeX code is always visible and easily manageable in these two IDEs.

LaTeX makes it easier to typeset any kind of document and change styles straightforwardly if necessary. MS Office tools lack of this flexibility, and tend to produce poor-looking documents.

It's simple, Latex does what you tell to do, MS Word does what it want. With latex you have total control of the document, you can create nice look documents, and you are always satisfied with the final result. At the begining could be dificult to remember all the commands, but once you domesticated, it is a great tool for scientific documents.

After all those words of praise some words of caution.

When coming from a world of being used to "word processers" (word, write, ...), be aware that you need to re-think the way you are creating documents. With WYSIWYG the focus is on placing all those nice and lovely pictures on those pages, then adding text around them. With TeX it may look quite akward when there are many pictures and relatively little text. Then you need to fiddle around with picture size (and re-run typesetting) so all that empty space is used properly. Not exactly what you may have had in mind before you started. So essentially you need to change your point of view when moving to TeX. Put together what you want to say, write it in your words. Then add the pictures and graphs to illustrate things. Because that's how TeX works. With TeX, pictures may end up all over the place, not neccessarily right next to the line where you are talking about them.

Also, everyone keeps telling you, that TeX out of the box gives you great results. Sorry to say, that's not exactly true. You will have to fiddle around and tweak the knobs, learn the structure and commands, so things will look as you expect them. This will happen especially with your first documents, being rather short at the time. They will look quite clumsy. With TeX, the longer the document, the more text, the better it will look.

TeX is a powerful tool, but the learning curve is a long and winding road. Be prepared for that.

I don't think there is anything special!! Except that it is FREE.

If we are expert in any of the editing software, we can do jumble anything be it either Latex or Word. This is My view....

Vivek Ramakrishnan is right, because adds a clever disclaimer -- "This is my view" An eye doctor would say his view is myopic !

I think that both are tools that server for their purposes. I also wrote my thesis in LaTeX and have used since for scientific manuscript writing. The same way as Edson with time and because of changing to another institution, I changed to MS Word which is used everywhere in academic management/administration. However, I am back in LaTeX now as copy-editor of an open journal and I wouldn't change it one bit. The results you get are very difficult to imitate in MS Word (and "imitation" is the word as most professional publishers like Elsevier and Wiley use LaTeX styling for manuscripts).

Until there is a track changes option in the software, I would steer clear of doing drafts in Latex. Your supervisor/PI may not thank you for working in WORD, but he/she will not kill you for using a program that does not track changes.

Hi Shannon,

LaTeX is not thought to keep track of changes in the same way as it has not editor. Like you can use any editor to edit LaTeX code, you can also use any control version program to keep track of the changes. I can recommend you Git for doing this:

http://gitref.org/

If you use Emacs, there is a package to integrate Git within Emacs.

Cheers.

Hi Shannon,

alternatively (if your mentor does not work with TeX) it is easy to highlight and comment in a PDF! It is then up to you to include the changes into your LaTeX file.

Depends on what you need to typeset. If it's mostly text, with an occasional figure or table, LaTeX may not be worth your time, although it is no more complicated than (and very similar in concept to) HTML. However, if you often have to typeset any of the following:

(*) complicated mathematical or physical notation (large matrices, systems of equations, etc.)

(*) numbered formulas

(*) numbered figures with inserts in text and math notation,

(*) cross-references by to sections or formulas by the number

(*) different journal formats

(*) different bibliography styles,

then MS Word is a major pain, and LaTeX is the magic solution.

^^i agree with Tobias and alexander,

i also wrote a thesis in latex and produced a pdf to get it corrected. it works very well if your supervisor is openmindend and doesn`t stick to word.

in technical work latex is so useful for grafics and equations in comparison to word- for me no question where to write my phd thesis!

the equations can be just typed in in raw text, no extra clicking and special equation editor tool- if you have to write pages of equations it is so helpful!

like alexander said, the magic solution =)

single bad argument with latex: the format of the figures and their position is an annoying problem. but this is the only contra argument i know.

greetings,

alex

As Sadovsky said, latex is useful for complicated manuscripts that require a lot of cross references. Although MS Word can be completed with a software for reference (as EndNote), in latex is very easy to have bibliographic references and even other cross references as figures, tables, section, chapters (for example, as seen in section 10.6.1), pages, etc. Also latex automatically creates footnotes and separates accurately the pages for double-sided documents (e.g. a new chapter always starts in an odd page).

When I am working in a document of less than 5 pages without much cross references, I use MS Word. But if my document will contain a lot of equations, figures, tables and complicated cross references (a journal paper, thesis, etc.) for more than 5 pages, I use latex.

A very important situation for me to prefer latex when using mathematics is the inline equations. In MS word, you can insert an inline equation by using mathtype, but if that equation has an exponent or if it is a fraction, the text lines will be separated. In Latex that does not happen unless the equation is really huge.

A very good and mature front end to latex is LyX. Takes all the hassle out of learning the latex markup language. Allows easy access to documents with multiple parts, maths etc.

I use miktex and I find it good. Anyway sometimes I realize that it's really stressful writing long reports with TeX editors.

Has anyone tried LyX? http://www.lyx.org/Home

Seems to be between LaTeX and Word. Worked quite well for me, but I just tested a few math elements.

Liebe Alex, it is quite possible that you are a brilliant writer and your work requires little editing. Our students are not so brilliant and we have to do a large amount of editing, which is not fun in a pdf. I would recommend writing the draft without figures and schematics in WORD and then finally putting it all together with Latex in the end. Edit 10 thesis's in WORD and 10 in Latex, and then get back to me ;)

How many people in this thread have to do a large amount of text editing?

You can suppose the difference between the MS Word and the LaTeX as a trade-off between the flexibility and the development speed. You can more easily start writing a document with MS Word, however, the LaTex is much more professional tool to produce official documents. If I wand to compare the LaTex with the MS Word, I can summarize the advantages of the LaTex as follows:

1. Arranging the figures and tables in LaTex is much more effective than MS Word. While you may experience some malfunctioning with MS Word, the LaTex-based tools such as MikTex and ScientificWorkplace are very stable.

2. Numbering of equations, figures, tables, sections, and subsections is much easier in LaTex-based tools. Since it compiles the document with any changes, it assigns numbers with no error. Using MS Word you need to check the numbers again after adding any new object in the middle of the document and you may need to fix some mistakes manually, however, I personally never got any such errors with LaTex-based MikTex.

3. The LaTex is much more flexible for equations especially when they are complicated. You can easily indent equations, arrange equations with different sizes, and change the size of the either whole equation or just a segment of it to name but a few.

4. LaTex provides much more flexibility for updating documents, changing the format of a prepared document, and so on.

5. Indeed it is an scripting technique to prepare a written document and if one is familiar with programming, s/he can easily get used to it and then it will be your first choice.

6. And finally, you can find an integrated tool-set including different editors, a compiler, and a reference manager amongst others all toghether for free.

Lieber Shannon,

i never said that i am an brilliant writer and i know that its more easy to correct in word, but think about whos work it is when someone is writing in latex: when you correct the thesis on a printed version, the writer is in pain because he has to get it into the document at the computer. so its no big difference if you correct 10 thesis in word or on printed out paper. I my self correct more likely on paper that on monitor anyways.

when writing a draft in word with all my equations i could do it in word at all- than the equations are already included. without equations my text woudn`t make so much sence i guess. Also you cannot just copy and paste drafts into latex. that will not work properly.

so i am still the oppinion, latex is a much better tool.

lots of greetings,

alex

@ Edward Smart

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In addition to all the rave reviews

is necessary to consider that change to other MS Office program, it is difficult, having to learn a series of commands and what you see on screen is a series of text difficult to identify.

LaTex, has many advantages for the development of scientific and technical writing, but if you run MS Office life , this change can be confusing.

An intermediate alternative, based on LaTeX, but with some semblance of a word processor, is "LYX" which is free software.

I've been used it for years on my laptop running on Ubuntu Linux. Here ,I will transcribe you what appears in the Ubuntu Software Center, about Lyx:

LyX is an olmost WYSIWYG-frontend for LaTex. It makes the power and typesetting quality of LaTex available for people who are used to word processors. Since LyX supports LaTex's concept of general mark-ups, it is even easier and faster to create professional quality documents with it than with usual word processors. It is also possible to use LaTex commands within LyX, so nothing of LaTex's power is lost.

1. typesetting / layout for equations is very nice (sometimes, Microsoft Word messes up here).

2. very good for handling references, equation numbering, etc. especially when these go into the hundreds.

3. free, open-source editors that won't go out-of-date and you're not forced to upgrade when you don't want to. No compatibility issues between editors (whether or not the editors are on the same OS).

4. works on almost any platform: Windows/Mac/Linux (and maybe more). and if you're just editing text, then even more platforms are possible, including your smartphone. In fact, because it's text, you can upload the file to Google Docs and multiple people can edit the file simultaneously in real-time.

5. great hyperlinking, especially in a long document. hyperlinking is preserved when you create a .PDF. section/subsections automatically become bookmarks in the .PDF for easy navigation.

6. works with any version control system: Git/Subversion/Mercurial/etc.

7. really easy to check for differences between documents using the Unix "diff" command in Linux/Mac, as well as the visual/graphical diff tools (Winmerge on Windows, opendiff on Mac, or meld/kdiff3/Kompare on Linux)

I think that all of the answers before hit the point: Latex gives nice appearance for paper oriented layout.

Especially when you he to maintain big documents like me containing 400 pages with 5 equations per page on average you will directly find, that LaTeX is the best solution. You may cut the work into pieces and edit them separately. The output is extremely small (400 page sum up to 2Mbyte in my case). Editing of equations with math editor in Word or LibreOffice looks like that one in LaTeX.

Only one draw pack I could find: Up to now it's not possible to create documents for eBook readers. This is due to the fact that the formating here has to adopt to the user defined layout of the canvas. LaTeX is made for fixed canvas. In that case I would recommend at the moment to use LibreOffice, which can directly create epub format.

But I'm quite sure that LaTeX will get the ability to create such documents after some time. Just give the programmers some time to create the required concepts (which are completely different from typesetting on fixed canvas and more like web page creating).

For those who are looking for flexibility, have you try to use Scientific Work Place? This program combines between the MS word and LaTex. It is as much resilient as Word and it has all LaTex features.

Have Scientific Workplace tried it, like it less than LaTeX. But then, I was already used to LaTeX, so take my subjective response with a grain of salt.

LaTeX has become not only a text editor but also an extraordinary graphics tool. I only use LaTeX to draw any kind of vector diagram. Some examples at: www.peregraph.com

As far as I know about the Latex, it is the best editor for writing mathematical formulas. Because, the Latex makes the text as you wish to edit it, but the Ms Word is not able to edit equations and formulas so you would like to edit. The latex has only some problem with editing graphs. But one can make use of OpenOffice or LibreOffice and makes EPS. files to be read by the Latex. In any case, the Latex is most appropriate tool for generating scientific papers and books, specially for mathematical and physical documents.

When I write, I am more concerned with getting my thoughts down, than with the actual formatting. I prefer drafting in a plain text editor (much faster, easier to control) than a WYSIWYG text processor. Especially when I will be adding formulas, illustrations, etc. (ever noticed that an edit of a WYSIWYG document results in illustrations, formulas, etc. getting moved about in the document randomly, meaning you have to go back and manually reformat everything?).

using LaTeX I get the meat down, then worry about what it is going to look like later...

Word docx document is not a good option for Elsevier Electronic Submission System.

Equations in docx can not be converted in the final PDF file. Word doc file is old. Therefore, I think that LaTeX is very good for this purpose however I do not know how to use it.

I've just come across with this "LaTeX for Word Processor Users" document that maybe can be useful for people willing to try LaTeX coming from the word processor world.

http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/latex4wp/latex4wp.pdf

I never use LaTex. I use the conjunct MS-Word+MathType+EndNote. With this, I writed my MSc. theses, to write scientific papers and scientific/engineering proposal and will write my PhD dissertation. The point is to use the MS-Word styles.

LATEX is very desirable especially for writers and publishers! It beautifies your work and make you in control of it. Just like learning anything new it has its own challenges eg winedit on LATEX were you have to write something similar to codes but you can use more friendly text editors that runs on latex the choice is yours!

Sorry to say this. But is this thread not getting a bit too long ? I see no new arguments or justifications. Maybe I should unsubscribe.

Is there any free download of latex, as a student, i wanna try

LaTEX is Open Source. The primary web site for LaTEX is http://www.latex-project.org/, which offers a guide for obtaining LaTEX for whatever operating system you prefer (http://www.latex-project.org/ftp.html). If you are new to LaTEX, you may find it more helpful to explore one of the third-party LaTEX front ends (for example, " "TexMaker" or "LYX" for Linux operating systems- there are many others, of varying degrees of sophistication). If you are using a Linux distribution, use your package manager software to identify which packages are available for your system. Have a look here for some suggestions: http://www.tug.org/interest.html#free

I prefer LaTeX and mostly LaTeX is my first choice. Some times I have to use MS Word and always surprise me when I discover very useful features. One of them is combination MS Word and reference manager Mendeley with "direct" connection between references and word document. The second very useful feature is MS Word equation writer, where equation can be written on a similar way than in LaTeX.

agree with Srini. Nothing different is coming up(... and perhaps nothing is left now). So its good to stop at this point.

It is easy to write complicated mathematical formulas. It helps to write documents which involve mathematical models.

I'm agree with Michael Kio

Have a look at Texmacs (www.texmacs.org). It is imo the easiest editor for documents with a lot of equations. And it is typesetting is even better than LaTeX. Drawback is that templates for publications need to be converted from LaTeX. Otherwise it is very productive.

LaTeX runs in batch and integrates well with R. This means it is very interesting for automatic 'production/generation' of parameterized reports that have to be populated using different data depending on the intended recipient.

LaTeX is really convenient when you have to meet formatting standards and don't want to spend the time doing so. Additionally, Word forces you to manually place your figures and equations. LaTeX also will automatically generate references and crossreferences for numbering sections, equations, figures, and generating tables of contents and bibliographies.

If you never felt like learning LaTeX because you thought it was too much effort, I'd recommend checking out http://spandex.io/blog. There are some really concise posts on how to get started, and they provide a cloud-based platform at http://spandex.io so you don't have to install or configure anything to get started. I recommend you give it a try.

Positioning of the figures are managed badly by MS Word, except figures MS Word good toll for writing with MathType.

LaTex is useful if you have to typeset a lot of math; it was definitely the way to go prior to about 2000 AD. I haven't used it in a long time - first I switched to Scientific Word, but it had poor support, and broke from version to version. When MathType became available as a purchased add-on to MS Word I never looked back ... I've invested enough effort into MS Word that I can make it do exactly what I need - so if one tool is sufficient, why use two?

My son, who is a mathematician, and loves Linux, tells me I should learn LaTex. So it seems you have a choice!

Peter-

You make a valid point- software and computers are merely tools for accomplishing ones goals or missions. If one has a tool with which one is intimately familiar that does the job efficiently, there is absolutely no justification for investing the effort and time to develop a similar level of intimate knowledge with a new solution. The only real justification for such an effort is that the tools bring significant enhancements to your ability to accomplish your goal or mission. Those of us who are strong advocates of Open Source solutions often overlook that, and that is why I still have one computer running Win98SE and Excel 2000- it is the bst tool for the specific tasks for which I use it.

But the commercial houses are just as guilty. I abandoned the Microsoft camp several years ago, when I realized all this forced upgrading to a newer version that was no longer compatible with your work environment (possibly breaking critical applications or requiring newer hardware to perform at the same level as before) was costing me more money/time/effort than I could afford to invest.

Years ago, I used LaTEX extensively, because that was the best tool with which I was familiar for accomplishing my goals, which included collaborating/communicating with peers. Over the years, my goals and missions have changed, and I find a lot of my work is now best addressed with more conventional word processors (although I am still constantly frustrated by both commercial and Open Source word processors moving illustrations about randomly when I edit text or correct spelling!).

The point I am trying to make is that one should use the tools most suitable to one's needs. However, for a young person just starting out in a new career, understanding the capabilities of alternative tools can be a significant advantage. Additionally, one can learn a lot about how conventional word processors function (or malfunction) by developing expertise in a formatting language. Remember Word Perfect 5.1?

There are several reasons why LaTeX is advantageous:

(1) As mentioned earlier, it separates the content from the layout, which makes it very easy to produce documents with, for example, different font styles and sizes depending on the target audience. Rather than selecting the entire content of the document, changing the display properties, and saving it as yet another file, you can determine on-the-fly the optimal display settings without ever touching the original words you have chosen for the document you have written. In the old days of web page authoring, people wrote the layout and content in one HTML file, which made changing a site of 100+ pages a major headache. That was later replaced by separating layout data into CSS and actual content in HTML, making the change in layout very simple. MS Office products employ the first mindset; LaTeX employs the second mindset.

(2) A large document such as a book with many authors is much easier to manage in LaTeX because the source documents for the book can be managed via a version control system (VCS) such as SVN, Git, or Mercurial. Even after initial chapter completion, authors can update their manuscripts if necessary by checking in the changes to the VCS server, and the document manager (producer) needs only to compile the source of the book to either check its progress or build the final product. Finally, all chapters can have their formatting specified in one place, similar to comment (1). This is much easier than opening each MS Word file, setting each document's formatting, checking the the results of that setting, copying the finished individual documents to a master document, and then checking the final document.

If half of the authors make changes for their final manuscripts in MS Word, then the producer must go through all of those steps again to create a new final product.

(3) LaTeX can be generated programmatically to draw beautiful pictures. These pictures then can be printed on anything from a postage stamp to a building-sized poster, with perfect precision and clarity.

(4) Those same pictures can then be used as is inside of a presentation, using a LaTeX presentation package such as Beamer. Here again, the images can be scaled to whatever size you need with perfect reproduction. A package included inside of Beamer even allows you to say commands like "I want to put a box around that auto-generated image, and the text "great result for our lab" centered horizontally such that the top of the text is immediately below the boxed image ."

(5) [Somewhat a restatement of (2)] LaTeX allows you to split the source of a document across many documents. Let's say you write a section for each of topics A,B,C,D, and E; for report one you need A,B,C, for report two you need A,D,E, and for report three you need C,D,E. If you solve this with MS-Word, you have three files, each with the same copy-and-paste text. However, if you change any of A,B,C,D,E, you must track which Word files you have and have not made the changes to, and if you add new sections or new reports, then you have to increase the amount of effort to manage all of the documents. With LaTeX, you write the source content one time in one place, then include and possibly format it for a particular purpose. That applies to writing slides with the Beamer class as well, and allows you to build a "slide warehouse" in a way to have each slide as a filename, telling you what the purpose of the slide was before even looking at its contents. You can assemble new presentations in minutes simply by including a selection of files from your slide repository, with a new global formatting appropriate to the presentation at hand.

(6) With LaTeX, you remember a fairly short list of commands (concepts you want to execute), and can write nice documents. With MS Office products, you have to wonder if menu locations and content have changed from version to version, despite the fact that what concept you want to achieve hasn't changed.

(7) Pricing: You must continue to buy new versions of MS Windows in order to use new versions of MS Office, just so you can create documents to communicate your ideas to other people. Yes, Microsoft Research and Microsoft Corporation want you to unlock your mind and be creative, but Microsoft Corporation only wants you to unlock your mind once you've paid them a fee.

There are plenty of other good reasons, and many of them have been covered by other individuals.