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Comment by pdpi | Hacker News Reader

> If you write equations in Word Equation Editor, your work just doesn't look very serious.

Haven't tried it in a while, but, last I checked, Word Equation Editor output didn't look serious because it looked janky and look like it wasn't really done in a "professional" tool. Part of that is a self-fulfilling prophecy of course, LaTeX output looks right in part because it's what people have been reading for decades, but TeX's formulas just look plain good.

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Last time I checked, Word was also basically untenable for math-heavy writing because there was too much procedure involved in setting a formula. This is fine if you need one here and there, but if you have lots of formulas (including many tiny ones, like just using the name of a variable), switching to a dedicated formula mode in the interface is just not pleasant. In LaTeX (or Typst), I just type $, and off I go.

Alt + = will put you in the equation editor fairly easily, and from there you can pretty much use LaTeX notation.

Even with a keyboard shortcut, I never found it to be truly satisfying. I cannot quite recall what was annoying, though. Maybe you cannot space back into the formula after closing it? (I certainly recall having the experience of typing a formula, closing it, noticing a mistake, hitting backspace, and deleting the entire formula.) Maybe there was just a slight delay for the formula editor to open? Also, $ is still more pleasant to type than Alt+=.

I would be willing to try again, but I'm not buying Word for the privilege.

Yet Word is leagues ahead of Google docs... (shudders)

There are add-ons for Gdocs. This is apparently pretty good. https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/autolatex_equat...

I don't know if this is still the case or not but equations in Word can be upgraded to MathType. IIRC the Word equations were a basic version of MathType (i.e. developed by the same people). MathType included latex syntax and much better layout and formatting. It was the only way to stay sane when working on journal articles with collaborators who gave less than zero interest in latex (i.e. physicians).

The equation editor in Word straight up supports LaTeX now days. It also supports UnicodeMath, which is an actual standard and a pretty cool one at that. Sadly it has almost no adoption outside of Word.

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