The first post about LaTeX answered the “what” and to some extent also what I’m about to write in more detail about today, the “who”.
So, getting down to it, Who should use LaTeX?
I don’t think that LaTeX is the “end-all killer app” that will magically solve all the problems in the world, so let’s face it, LaTeX isn’t for everyone, and its usefulness will almost always depend on the user. Someone who doesn’t want to use it, won’t find it useful. Simple as that. Have no illusions; LaTeX does take some time to master, but it is not an impossible task.
Having that said, I would encourage most people to try LaTeX, since it might be just what you’ll need some day.
There are of course groups of people more likely than others to find use and value in LaTeX, such as scientists (due to the ease of use when writing reports filled with formulas), students (since LaTeX is free as in “free beer”), as well as anyone else who recognize the importance of keeping away from vendor lock-in.
The fact that LaTeX source files (your content) are composed of plain text files, and the output files can be both .ps and .pdf is also beneficiary, since this makes distribution and thus cooperation simple. I know I am somewhat repeating myself, but these are important concepts worth repeating.
Several people can write on the same document, at the same time! Think about that. Granted, one would need to find several people, set up a version control system, and all those people would be required to know how to write LaTeX syntax, but in a (software) development department two out of these three requirements would already be fulfilled, all you’d need to do was teach them how to use LaTeX.
Sure, you cannot see the result in real-time, everyone would have to commit their changes to the version control system first, and of course if two people edit the same paragraph there will be a conflict, but I can give you an example of how development groups which I have been a part of in the past, has handled multiple document writers, without LaTeX; Poorly!
We had a version control system (SubVersioN), and we used Microsoft’s .doc format (some in the group used Windows, some used Mac, and some used various flavors of GNU/Linux). Thus we had two problems. First of all, incompatibility issues (as OpenOffice.org of GNU/Linux cannot handle the .doc format well.)
Second, the .doc format is a binary format, so when we commit it to SVN, the algorithms that try to work out what was changed in the file since the last check-in cannot peek into it and find out, so it has to assume that the latest committed version is the correct one. This would of course present a problem if someone, say, didn’t update their local repository before starting to add text into the document.
But even if everyone updates before committing, what if several persons had edited the document at the same time? As previously stated, SVN can’t determine what has been changed, and thus is unable to merge new additions.
Example: We have a file containing “foo”. I download it, you download it. I replace “foo” with “bar”, while you on the other hand, append “baz” so your file reads “foo baz” while mine reads “bar”. Then I commit my change, so the file stored on the server now reads “bar”, but of course, SVN cannot know this, since the format is binary, not plain text, when you commit your change, the file will read “foo baz”, when it most likely should read “bar baz”.
Get the picture?
This happened a lot. In the end we agreed to only have one writer per document. If I wanted something added to a document which I didn’t “own” I’d have to ask the “owner” to add it for me, or sit beside him/her while s/he added it.
With LaTeX this most likely won’t happen. Sure, you’ll run in to the occasional conflict, where the algorithms cannot decide which is the better version to keep, and then you’ll have to manually resolve it, but at least you’ll get that option.
So to sum it up:
If you are a
- Researcher / Scientist, or
- Student, or
- Developer, or
- virtually any other person with an urge to learn something new
and you have
- Time and willingness to learn a new technique, or
- Limited supply of money, or
- An urge to stop wasting time on laying out your documents, or
- An urge to break out of vendor lock-in
then by all means, do try out LaTeX.
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