texlive

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Mon, 2016-01-25 at 13:52 +1030, Tim wrote:
> Just for curiosity's sake, is academias prolific use of it because
> its
> ingrained into them, or does it really outclass the alternatives?
> 
> I know that in general use, I find Word horrendous.  But I've never
> tried formulae in it, etc., nor used any word processor as a
> precision
> page layout engine, either.

Yes, it really outclasses the alternatives. When it comes to
typesetting complex equations, it really has no competition. No doubt
Word can be tortured into producing equation output (I know it has some
maths setting capability) but the huge advantage of TeX/LaTeX is that
it's *not* a word processor, it's a document description language and
typesetter. There are plenty of examples on the Web so I won't repeat
them here, but as someone who worked on an early typesetting system for
Cambridge University Press (way back in the 70's) I know how horrendous
maths copy can be and how well TeX handles it.

poc