What is LaTeX?

• LaTeX is a system for making nicely typeset documents.
• It separates the actual content from the layout
  • you write the text THEN typeset to format it
  • c.f. WYSIWYG editors like MS Word

Why Choose LaTeX?

• The output looks great -- more professional than MS office
  • Text is formatted as a whole, rather than as individual characters

Why Choose LaTeX?

LaTeX: Word:

Why Choose LaTeX?

• You can focus on the actual writing, rather than the formatting
• When you DO come to do the formatting, it's easy to RELIABLY make global changes

Other great things about LaTeX

• You can get a lot of control with little effort
• It's independent of your computer’s platform -- you can open tex files on any system AND it’s free.
  • Free as in speech and free as in beer

Other great things about LaTeX

• Archival.
  • Your document should still compile in 50 years time.
    
  • In the worst case, source is plain text
  • TeX was originally written in 1978, original TeX documents still compile perfectly.
  • Is this the case with Word 97? Wordstar? Lotus Notes?

Other great things about LaTeX

• The output is trustworthy and consistent
  • You won't get random changes of font
  • When you change the document settings, it changes them everywhere
    • So it won't matter if you forget to select say your figure captions
• You can automatically create your table of contents AND have it link to the right parts of your document

Other great things about LaTeX

• Numbering is done automatically
  • You can shuffle around pieces of your document without worrying about the order
  • Things that update automatically:
    • section/chapter numbering/TOC
    • Figures/tables/schemes (also known as "floats")
    • Equations and compounds -- you can even get automatic numbering to happen WITHIN your images

Other great things about LaTeX

• It's very easy to make shortcuts (also known as macros) e.g.
  • accented text: \maori to produce māori
  • long words: \rimu to produce dacrydium cupressinum
  • formatted text: \oneJPtP to produce ¹J_Pt-P

Other great things about LaTeX

• A new line doesn't mean a new paragraph, which is really great for lists of data
• You can choose how involved in the document set up you get
  • You can stick to the basics, and it will look great
  • OR you can get really involved in styles and formatting control -- there are many fancy things you can do!
• It handles large documents very well (and you don't have to typeset the whole thing every time)

Common complaints about LaTeX

(and why they're wrong)

• You have to learn how to code
  • Not really. There are a few commands that you have to use, but they're more like keyboard shortcuts (e.g. ctrl+B for bold) than proper coding
• There's a steep learning curve
  • Word also has a steep learning curve for anything more than the basics
  • The pay off is definitely worth it!