[TriLUG] LaTeX revisited

tomed at bellsouth.net tomed at bellsouth.net
Thu Feb 8 09:47:34 EST 2007


I've recently looked into LaTeX after several years of other types of
document management/publishing. I was pleased to find that development
on LaTeX has continued, making it somewhat more user friendly. I'd say
it's now as easy, for complex documents, as your friendly neighborhood
word processor.

* It now has a pdf rendering engine, with support for standard
graphics formats, so it's no longer necessary to convert images to
eps, and pdf generation is a one step process.

* There are more easy options for page layout, headers, footers, etc.

* My company requires long tables in some documentation. These tables
can go on for page after page, a real headache in word processors.
LaTeX now handles these nicely.

* You can easily modularize documents. This feature has always been
there, but it was my exposure to xml documentation that introduced
me to the concept. It makes it very easy, for example, to move huge
tables around, and to add, delete, or reuse them.

Some of the old issues are there, for example it's still difficult
to convert documents from word processor formats. Microsoft's strange
ideas about certain unicode characters are still a hassle (although
LaTeX now has good support for standard unicode.) 

Also, lots of people love the MS revision control system, as it's simple
and doesn't require a RC server. 

So it's still the case that it's difficult to collaborate with users who
love their word processors and who know nothing of text based RC. For me
this means that I only use LaTeX (or xml) when I'm flying solo.

Tom Ed



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