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Comment by phalangion | Hacker News Reader

The author's found arguments of separating content from presentation is only part of the reason I use LaTeX. I use LaTeX and other markup languages (mainly AsciiDoc) when I can, as opposed to using a word processor, because I have found that Word manages to find hidden ways to mangle any document that does more than include text in paragraphs. What I like about using LaTeX is if the document is broken, it's usually my fault and I can see the underlying code that is breaking it. If you've ever had to unzip a Word document to fix the underlying XML (I have), you'll understand how frustrating it is working with hidden markup.

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This, this, and this a thousand times. As a PhD student about to write up his thesis I'm on the cusp of deciding whether to go down the Word or LaTeX route. I cannot describe how unbelievably angry I have gotten at Word screwing up document after document.

My last effort was a journal paper submission, and the journal in question supplied the (80MB!!!) template which was so crammed full of macros, custom styles and miscellaneous instructions that my AV program quarantined it. When I eventually managed to use it, I literally transferred the content from Notepad++ (my go-to for the act of actually writing - take note, OP) and images etc. from file and spent DAYS trying to get the format right. A hateful experience.

Word is great for casual use. For academic or professional use beyond the barest of basic typesetting, absolutely not.

Not sure if you saw my above comment, but if you did go down the LaTeX path, would you have to set up the environment yourself?

I realize people may want to customize things later, but making the initial install as painless as possible seems highly desirable - esp. for students.

For students, especially undergrad, overleaf is an excellent way to dip your toes into latex. I wouldn't want to use it for anything large or serious, but it will handle a typical undergrad length document and doesn't even require installation.

https://www.overleaf.com

I used Overleaf for my PhD thesis without any issues, including a lot of figures, etc. In fact, I almost only use Overleaf when it comes to LaTeX - it takes care of most of the pain points and is a great service that I pay for.

I tried Overleaf briefly when first converting my CV a couple years ago. Having a live preview helped so I didn't have to wait while recompiling.

Although things like [Skim][1] exist, Basictex does most of what I need, so I've never really tried wiring it into my existing install.

Pipe dream - If the people who work on macOS's Preview application were smart, they would steal it (or [Marked's][2]) ability to have a custom processor for displaying output. In that case, I could point it at my TeX install and just run my Makefile from there.

[1]: https://skim-app.sourceforge.io

[2]: http://marked2app.com/help/Custom_Processor.html

Very cool tools/perspective, but I think we have pretty different workflows/setups. I love not struggling to install TeX or its packages, and for me Overleaf has taken care of so many things that to reproduce it on my own seems much more effort than I'm willing to do.

To add to this, I find immense value in dealing with text files. In other words, treating them like I treat my code. It plays well with my choice of text editor, version control system, and distribution. Word just doesn't fit all these criteria. Being non-free and proprietary makes it a pretty awful choice for collaboration and distribution.

For the same reasons, I even switched to making all my presentations in latex even though I believe Google slides and Powerpoint are feature-wise unarguably superior.

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