LaTeX is a great way to build attractive and easy to maintain documents with very little effort. Any time that you want a good looking document, but you are not too picky about how exactly the document is typeset, LaTeX can do your work for you. It frees you from the formatting of the document so that you can focus on its structure and content.
For example, at my place of business we write a lot of design documents for custom software. These documents pass through the brains and editors of many people on different platforms and operating systems. LaTeX helps us to keep consistent formatting, numbering, internal references, indexes, and contents lists. It also generates very professional looking documents without us needing to employ a typesetter. LaTeX can generate documents in multiple formats depending on our client's needs. It is about as easy as HTML to learn, and it provides a much richer set of tools. Because LaTeX files consist of marked up plaintext, a LaTeX user doesn't have to worry about being able to read his or her files in ten years. Family histories, and other documents of an archival nature, are more easily preserved when they do not have to be converted to the latest word processor format. For this reason I find it convenient to keep my personal diary as a LaTeX document. If you come to the meeting, I can provide you with more specific examples of LaTeX's relevance. Richard P.S. Please note that the author recognizes that formatting academic research papers is a good and noble endeavor, which alone is a sufficient reason to learn LaTeX. On Monday 27 December 2004 11:59, Josh Coates wrote: > i think it would be interesting to have someone explain if/why LaTeX is a > relevant technology outside of formatting for academic research papers. > > Josh Coates > http://www.jcoates.org > <snip> -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
