LATEX for Windows – a User's Perspective
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LATEX for Windows – A User’s Perspective David M. Tulett Faculty of Business Administration Memorial University of Newfoundland [email protected] Abstract LATEX is a technically brilliant package for typesetting, but in the Windows world Microsoft Word continues to be widely used.1 From the perspective of an end-user of these products, the relative strengths and weaknesses of LATEX and Word are examined. Introduction The second major advantage (though it may seem like a disadvantage at first) of LAT X over Word Among operating systems for personal computers, E is its different paradigm for document creation. In the Microsoft Windows family (95/98/ME/NT/2000) contrast to the WYSIWYG approach, the user of has over 90% of the market, and it is on this market LAT X specifies the structure and lets LAT X handle on which this paper focuses. For printing text on to E E the design of the document. The advantage of this paper, most users of Windows use Microsoft Word. approach over WYSIWYG has been extensively de- Word can be bought as a standalone package, or it scribed – see, for example, Love [10] for a discussion can be bought as part of the Office suite package, of LAT X versus Word, and Taylor [12] for a critique which contains many popular programs such as Ex- E of WYSIWYG in general. cel and PowerPoint. There are other word process- This paper addresses the issue of why LAT X has ing packages for Windows users, such as Corel Word- E nowhere near the numbers of users that Word has. Perfect, but this package mostly appeals to those I know of many people with technical backgrounds who have always used it and have remained loyal to who have never tried LAT X, and indeed I know of it, or to those who are very price-sensitive. There E some who have given up on LAT X and have switched are also desktop publishing systems such as Corel E to Word. This paper is written from the perspective Ventura, Quark Express, and Adobe PageMaker. of an ordinary user of LAT X, not someone who is These latter programs are quite expensive, and the E a computer programmer. The rest of the paper is technical advantages over Word have diminished as organized as follows. First, a personal historical Word continues to add new features. These word- background of how I became interested in LAT X processing and desktop publishing systems are all E is presented. Secondly, a comparison of LAT X and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). While E Word is made. Thirdly, we look at other options. to a certain extent all these packages compete with Finally, recommendations are given. LATEX, in this paper the scope is restricted to a comparison between the hugely-successful Word and Historical Background LATEX, which is by comparison a niche product. The Dark Ages (Before LAT X) In this sec- One major advantage of LATEX is that it does E a very good job of typesetting mathematics. Even tion I wish to explain how I became interested in A something as simple as x + y = z looks better LTEX. During my engineering undergraduate ed- ucation (1971-75), all assignments involving math- in LATEX than it does in Word. The difference between the two approaches widens considerably ematics (except my thesis) could be hand-written, when typesetting something more complex, such as: and were. For prose essays, I used an electric typewriter. In 1975, I wrote my undergraduate −1 x1 a1,1 a1,2 ··· a1,n b1 thesis on a typewriter, using a special ball to handle x2 a2,1 a2,2 ··· a2,n b2 mathematical symbols. I was glad that this was the . = . . only requirement for this technology. After working . . .. . for several years, I entered a doctoral program in x a a ··· a b n n,1 n,2 n,n n management science, and wrote my dissertation in 1985. While there were developments in the T X 1 There are many references in this paper to trademarks E or registered trademarks. These have been capitalized. world at that time, they were not available to me. 140 TUGboat, Volume 22 (2001), No. 3 — Proceedings of the 2001 Annual Meeting LATEX for Windows – A User’s Perspective What was available (on the university’s mainframe) today, I often need to consult a book for a particular was a program for word-processing which had lim- problem.) By contrast, I learnt how to use Word ited ability to write mathematical text. Writing without ever reading the manual. something like α = β+γ was easy to do, but creating During this period with a terminal on my desk, a display equation was not. For example, the LATEX my 512K Mac had become obsolete, and I obtained expression \[ y = \sum_{i=1}^n x_i \] creates an IBM PC mostly to use a lot of common business n X software such as the then-popular Lotus 1-2-3. The y = xi university had a site license for a commercially-made i=1 version of LATEX, and for about2 C$50 I had it Making this equation back then required writing installed on my machine. This was still 2.09, but P an n on one line, y = xi on a second line, and now I could view dvi output on my monitor. finally writing i = 1 on a third line. This would One nagging problem at the time was what have to all be set in a non-proportional font and to use as an editor for creating the tex file. I then trial-and-error would have to be used to make tried several things, but eventually settled on using sure that all the symbols lined up correctly. It goes WordPerfect, simply saving the file in ASCII format. without saying that putting the three lines together (I needed WordPerfect anyway, for communication produced an equation which looked terrible. At with non-TEX users.) Compared with what I had the time I thought that this word processor was a had only a few years earlier, this setup seemed to be tremendous improvement over my 1975 experience, the cat’s meow. but of course hoped that something better would I had become a proficient user of LATEX, and become available. now saw limitations in what had once been a package In 1985 I began working for my current em- with so many new things. The biggest limitation ployer. In the previous year the Faculty of Busi- was graphics. I can remember trying to approx- ness Administration had acquired a large number imate a parabola by drawing a sequence of short of Macintosh computers for faculty and staff, and straight lines. Even straight lines had a small finite I began to use the Mac for everyday things like set of angles from which to choose. For making a making up tests. At first MacWrite was the only problem involving two-dimensional linear optimiza- word processing program, but then Microsoft Word tion, I would make the objective function and the was released, long before it came to Windows. In constraints so that when drawn they would be at 1988 a colleague and I decided to make up a set of angles which LATEX could handle, which is surely notes for a course which we taught. I decided to the tail wagging the dog! have a look at what was available. The Renaissance (LAT X 2 ) Walking through a The Middle Ages (LAT X 2.09) In searching for E ε E bookstore in 1995, I came across the second edition a software package to help us write our book, I of Lamport’s book [9]. After reading it, I followed did some reading on the WYSIWYG packages, and Lamport’s recommendation to obtain The LAT X saw references to LAT X, which was then in version E E Companion [3], and I inquired at the university 2.09. We decided to adopt it, mostly because of about upgrading the software. The company from its ability to create nice-looking equations. The which the site license had been obtained was no other advantage of LAT X, that it used logical rather E longer selling LAT X, and we were left to fend for than visual design, seemed at the time to be a E ourselves. We obtained a two-CD set of the CTAN disadvantage – after three years of using a Mac it archive, and my colleague managed to figure out was hard to leave an established paradigm. This how to use it despite the lack of instructions. The was especially true given how we printed the dvi effort to upgrade LAT X was in my opinion justified files. We had terminals to the mainframe, which E by the new \qbezier command, but we soon found of course let us view the ASCII-based tex file, but other useful features, such as the ability to: print there was no way to preview the dvi file. The 300 dpi on legal size paper; use colour; import graphics; and laser printer was located in another building about import new packages. In particular, I was glad to see 300 metres away. the times and mathptm packages had been made To learn LAT X, I purchased the first edition of E for creating words and mathematical characters in Lamport’s book [8]. I read it over a weekend to Times-Roman fonts. The Computer Modern fonts get the general idea of what it was all about, and then read it again trying to learn the content.