Writing latex code feels like a timewarp to the days when people used "diskettes". Is there a better language that can accomplish the same things?
Better typesetting language than latex?
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terrible adviceyes. you can use MS word.
Anything Microsoft sucks too. Use LibreOffice or OpenOffice.
if you are doing things properly then you shouldnt ever be using office software except to open/edit files other people send you, in which case the most important thing is compatibility with MS Office, which means you should just use MS Office
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GOD, the only advantage of Libre/OpenOffice is that they are for free. In practically all other aspects is some newer MS Office way ahead currently. I used to be a devoted user of these alternatives but once I moved to the other side, I never ever looked back.
Anything Microsoft sucks too. Use LibreOffice or OpenOffice.
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Latex sucks, is for older idiots and dates you.
- Physical Review Letters, Nature, etc. use Advanced Print Publisher (APP), also known as Advent 3B2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbortext_Advanced_Print_Publisher- http://www.zinktypografie.nl/latex.php?lang=en
- Free: http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus
- http://www.quark.com/Products/QuarkXPress/#1
- not recommended: https://www.adobe.com/products/indesign.html
- free, based on LuaTeX and better than Latex: https://speedata.github.io/publisher/
- http://troff.org/ and this is how it compares to Latex http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-03.html
- https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=comp.text.tex/8zugdUxw6dI/mu7Qzs4bQDYJ
- http://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html
- https://github.com/simoncozens/sile
- https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/lout
- http://www.mackichan.com/index.html?products/sw.html~mainFrame
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Use markdown for simple text
Buy if you want code-based equations, there is nothing more efficient than latex to the best of my knowledgeyou can use LaTex in markdown it converts quite well to both LaTeX and Word so you can keep all your -co-authors happy and yes you can convert back.
So I now draft in markdown including equations but put tables in later, although there is an online table generator for markdown that works well. Doing this I need to think less about the formatting than with LaTeX. If I can do all my bibliographic management with bibtex even if I want to produce a word doc in the end. I can use it for articles, webpages, presentations (generates beamer or html5). I've used LaTeX for years and it is still important to know it. But really it is time to change how you work.
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nnice discussion here: http://blog.martinfenner.org/2014/03/03/six-misunderstandings-about-scholarly-markdown/
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and here is another option http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/adrn/ipython/blob/2.x/examples/Notebook/Typesetting%20Math%20Using%20MathJax.ipynb
you can then convert to markdown/LaTeX using nbconvert and you can draft the notebook in markdown and then convert to notebook using notedown.
So really it is not a choice between things but rather using complementary tool to generate the final product.
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Use Lyx. Its a shell over latex. It can compile to latex. It automatically generates pdfs with a button click. And if you need to do fancy latex or tex programming you can do that in lyx by adding code to the preamble and by defining new things in the local layout. Plus it supports child parent document relations (i.e. you have different chapters in different files and then a master document compiles everything together) and it supports macros/function interdependence between child parent files (i.e. you create a macro in one file and lyx will automatically add the macro to other files and you can seamlessly use them within miliseconds)
BUT, creating tables in lyx SUCKSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!