Advantages and Disadvantages of LaTeX?
LaTeX gives you several advantages over regular wordprocessors, depending on what you plan to do with it. The most important of them all shall be mentioned here.
- free availability
For almost any operating system a LaTeX distribution is available to download for free on the internet. This leads us to
- LaTeX plattform-independent
Documents created by LaTeX can be opened, edited and printed on almost any available computersystem - LaTeX produces brilliant typographic output
Other than regular wordprocessors LaTeX produces beautifully typeset documents without requiring the user to know anything about typography - typesetting mathmatical equations
Especially engineers, mathmaticians and other users who need to include formulas or equations in their documents can create these very same in a good-looking and rather easy way. - logical instead of physical formatting
This means that all formatting is done by LaTeX, the user only defines the structure of a document. - stability
LaTeX is one of the most stable software packages, which is proven by the fact, that it has been around in its current version since 1994 (with only a few marginal changes). There is no such thing as data loss.
Are there any disadvantages??With so much light there has to be at least some shadow:
- steep learning curve
New users find first steps with LaTeX usually complicated, getting started with Word or other WYSIWYG-prgramms is a lot easier. But after you have become aquainted things will be a lot easier than with Word. Including a table of contents is by far easier using LaTeX. - no official support
Since LaTeX is not the product of a company, there is no one you could call or email. Instead there are many books, websites, mailing lists and users groups you could turn to. - Layoutmodifications are rather complicated
In case you need personalized templates you will have to know a lot about LaTeX and TeX. Although there are lots of classes for all kinds of uses out there you might find that you need very specific changes, which usually can't be done in a few minutes.
