Beautiful LaTeX Book with Examples
github.com
github.com
But
I think there's definitely a need for well-curated collections of "common things people want or need to do documents"...like the "draft" watermarking, confidential flag, QR codes, org charts/family trees, and so on - especially if they are well-commented.
I would love to see such a collection for doing various common page layouts, and also for leveraging many of the features of PDFs.
And no, the various sites that host lots of example LaTeX documents don't feel like they are really a substitute. I've found them poorly curated and as a LaTeX novice, it's difficult to figure out how to extract the one thing the author of the document is doing that you want to pull and replicate. So often, I've tried to do so and ended up with incomprehensible 'compile' errors.
Even after repeated attempts to learn LaTeX and do useful things with it, I still find it almost impenetrable. Debugging is nearly impossible because the "compiler" gives completely shit error messages, and looking at LaTeX code as a beginner, I just see meaningless ASCII vomit. LaTeX seems to use a ton of "this one particular punctuation mark or letter tacked on to this command or function means LaTeX will actually interpret that as..." bullshit that makes the code impossible to read or understand.
I understand why that sort of shorthand was done given LaTeX was written in the Every Byte Is Sacred Era - but some evolution of LaTeX to be more parseable to the human eye/brain in the last three decades would have been nice.
My first advice would be to invest in getting The LaTeX Companion (https://www.amazon.com/LaTeX-Companion-Techniques-Computer-T...). Really, it is the "common things people want or need to do documents" as you said.
The third edition is just out of the presses. I have the 2nd one, and one of the appendixes is an explanation of LaTeX and TeX infamously cryptic error messages, and it is really useful.
As for using PDF features, try PDFLaTeX or even better, XeLaTeX or luatex. The latter use utf-8 and advanced PDF kerning techniques, among other useful stuff.
But I found that once I learned the LaTeX syntax, I can type equations faster than I can write them by hand, especially if they're complex. This is because most equations have lots of repeated elements (for example, when say, you're rearranging an equation), and I can copy and paste faster than I can rewrite them. I could take notes in LaTeX faster than a professor could write them on the chalk board.
I wrote my dissertation in LaTeX, and while I hate the debugging (errors are arcane), learning the "incantations" are really the least of one's worries. I wouldn't be put off by that.
You can create amazingly beautiful publications in LaTeX and I'm not aware of anything equal for writing mathematical formulas, but I would probably not recommend anyone use LaTeX for a publication in 2023.
Another matter is that there are many LaTeX templates for many academic journals. LaTeX will reign supreme until typst templates are created and adopted as an alternative.
Finally, there's on matter I don't know about. I've heard that the TeX engine solves some tough optimization problems on word spacing, line breaking and layout. I wonder how typst compares, given it's young age.