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Go try Typst

i love how the list of possibilities at the end faded away in the distance

No thanks, I'm fine with using word

In regards to "quality" there's no reason to think Word and Latex can't reporduce the same sequence of text and images. I did that exercise long ago: Wrote a document in Word and exported to PDF, tried to replicate it in Latex and compared the two, the differences were minimal. Did the same but in reverse: Wrote a document in Latex and replicated it to word, same conclusion. But the document firstly made with word was diferent from the one first made with Latex: The difference is the mindset of the writer. If you are a Latex user, you will probably use Word diferently than someone who uses word regularly. In regards to longevity, there is some issue. One time I had to submit a report which I made with Latex, 3 weeks later I needed to submit another report similar to the first one and the thing didn't compile because some package has changed its syntax in a recent update

Why not use typst?

I just loved this presentation!

I used it for my math papers when I was getting my degree in mathematics

Nice, nice video about something I've loved for a long time. Thank you!

Damn. Ehere have you been when i was writing my phd dissertation!?

Excellent.

Thank you for the video and the interesting history. I like LaTeX for its robustness in combining large files into one, and I do not like to use Windows. But I disagree with the equations writing experience. For me it is more like: - Word: As if I use my pen, without lifting my fingers off the keyboard, what I want to write appears instantly, including matrices, divisions, Greek letters, integral signs... I do not need to compare what I want to what I intent in the code. - LaTeX: I have to think a lot about how to organise curly brackets and use correct environments and calls for different equations etc, often requiring me to actually write the formula on a paper first and go about trying to put elements into pages-long LaTeX code, scrolling up and down, diagnosing more than reviewing I do in Word. One last comment: Default LaTeX-generated documents are beautiful out-of-the-box, but it is not a result of coding it as a plain text, it is rather a default style choise (fonts, spacing etc) LaTeX makes over Word or LibreOffice.

I’ve been using LaTeX on sites like Piazza for writing math equations for over two years now but never really knew what TeX or LaTeX actually was (whether a language, an application, etc), or the history behind any of it. Thank you so much for this amazing video.

it's pronounced LAY TEKS

Hello from New York City! Can LaTeX be is used to create documents from Templates that have slight variations like resume and cover letters? Thank you for your informative video.

Dude really started a video about LaTeX with scribes and the printing press, video essays nowadays lol

You just changed the thumbnail for this video a minute ago.

In my last year of university we had to use LaTeX to format our papers and I HATED IT. Seriously, getting it to put things where you need them and not do weird, random page breaks and unusual spacing, or graphics in the wrong place was an absolute nightmare. And that's not even getting to the wait time getting it to compile. I always had to go through a dance of build+clean+build+build+clean+build+build before it would produce an accurate pdf. Thank god I don't deal with that any more.

Good video.

I may have missed it, but I didn't see any comments that brought up the fact that since you use a plain text document for the content it is now possible to programmatically generate documents. Also, if for no other reason than that I finally found out how to pronounce LaTeX this was a terrific video. :-)

Nice!

I clicked expecting this to be on a different kind of latex, but I'm not at all disappointed

The few of us who use Latex outside academia pronounce it like the liquid rubber is made from. ;) I love it not so much for the results but for the fact I can do nice typesetting in an ordinary text editor and my documents remain portable and easy to store in version control.

Nice presentation. I had to use plain TeX for typesetting (around 1982-1984) my almost 300 page PhD Thesis, with my own custom macros as LaTeX only supported 10-point fonts at our installation. Basically had my own VT100 terminal hooked up to a DEC-10 (36-bit PDP-10) using TECO (as my favourite editor) and sent dvi files via some command (or PostScript directly) to get typeset output from the PostScript printer at the Royal Military College Computer Centre - some graphics were done using custom plain-TeX (migrated to TeX82 from TeX78) macros and some were inserted scans from a Zeta Plotter ... lots of history ... I was so much more productive on a VT100 than the rather distracting GUI oriented OSes ... heading back to optimising my own environment now I have a bit more time for myself. (from memory).

Nice if you cannot use an R service with ggplot2.

3:10 Some people pronounce LaTeX as la-teh (with "h" at the end, not "k"). Because that sound at the end of Bach and Loch is also similar to "h" (in German and Scottish respectively).

Very cool video. Special shoutout for distinguishing the state-machine and the OOP paradigm. I have often written code with mixing and matching these two paradigms which is quite unfortunate. Well better late than never to fix it :)

Started using Overleaf last year 2022 because I find it easier to make multiple choice Mathematics exams in LATEX. Tried doing exams in Word and it automatically adjusts the indentions, which i find annoying.

Latex is a thick, creamy white, milky emulsion, although sometimes it may be a thin, clear, yellow or orange, aqueous suspension. Latex has many uses; from clothing to paint, but most importantly is rubber. That word isn't always vulgar. That is the real reason they deliberately mispronounce it.

I started using LaTeX as the first thing when entering Uni. Even just a month into it when we were at a status seminar with the other groups I was already repulsed by their formatting in word.

I have never used Latex. As a professional typesetter i use Adobe Indesign. Back in the 1990s i have seen guys working on Agfa Compugrafix and Linotype systems. The bromide outputs those machine gave us were incomparably perfect. I don't think even Latex can beat it. Miss those Agfa beauties.

I write all my personal diaries in .txt files. Nice small files. I am sure I am close to a million lines of text. That concept does NOT work, does NOT apply, to science and math documents.

​ @Bill Woods So never being able to use something because the learning curve is so steep is a good thing? So choosing user unfriendly tools over user friendly tools is a good thing? So tools are supposed to be unfriendly and useless rather than easy to use and useful?

I did my 274-page doctoral dissertation for Rutgers University in 2000 and published 8 peer reviewed math papers from 2001 to 2012 all in MS Word + Mathtype. I began with Mathtype in 1997. I've heard of tex/latex since I entered graduate school at Rutgers in math in 1988. I have never figured out how to use them. Tried over a dozen times. That is how worthless and user-unfriendly and horrible tex/latex are.

Oh my god this video is so good

I made it all the way to Linear Algebra only having heard of LaTeX. After a week of painstakingly writing systems and matrices, I said to myself, there is NO way this is how this subject should be studied. I found someone using Vim and Latex to write math notes live, made an account on Overleaf and never looked back. The speed at which you can take notes is astounding. It took about a day just to figure out how to make a document and produce some equations, another day to learn formatting, and by the third day, I had 19 pages of notes. Amazing software.

I published a 274-page PhD dissertation in MS Word 2000 + Mathtype 6.0 in 2000 in differential algebra and 8 peer reviewed math papers across 4 different journals in MS Word 2000 and Mathtype. I love MS Word because it frees me up to do mathematics. I literally do algebra and math within MS Word by cutting and pasting formula. I love that I just point and click and drag. There is none of this INSANITY of memorizing massive amounts of obscure code and then running it through some processor in the hopes of producing some document you can read. You literally see exactly what you will get. The ONLY negative you CAN say about it is that it's not open-source and is not saved as a small .txt file. Now, in WHICH UNIVERSE is it YOU are living in where you are NOT freed up from worrying about formatting to work on math instead if you use MS Word?

WYSIWYG is an awesome acronym for an awesome feature.

Absolutely could not live without, but the last program I used was not really good, so right now I use Mathematika to write a book, well . I will try the new browser version but they probably charge when you reach publication.

Such a perfect visualization for a great visualization tool!

I hear the arguement that it allows you to focus on content more and I don't know if I completely agree. I think it depends on what you need at that moment. Sadly in exerpinces where you are trying to transfer information and recreate it in the form of LaTEX, I am gonna have to say that if anything you end up having to focus much more on having fifty tabs open to remember how to do a certain organization thing in LatEX while with more advanced papers where you are more starting fresh it may legitimately allow you to focus on content more. I also am mixed that I feel it does indirectly encourage a bit of elitism around what papers are accepted and ironically one that is more usable by those who are scammers and thus know latex while blocking out those who may have a more novel idea but don't know anything about latex or similar codes. There can also be difficulties with say when there is an expectation for a change of format such as when you need rows to be inlined directly in the middle because that is how the papers themselves are supposed to be arranged. Not impossible but latex own features work against it. Also I admit a lot of the palete looks washed out to me which is something I always didn't like about papers lol but I know you can change that but still

How does LaTex compare with something like Markdown?

How do you explain the pronunciation but still get it wrong..

Latex is time wasting garbage. It has gone beyond its use by date. It is trying to solve a problem that no longer exists.Nature, for example, prefers submissions in Word, as the journal’s typesetting system requires this format, says Simon Gribbin, Nature’s managing production editor. Still, around one in ten accepted submissions are in LaTeX format; these are converted to Word before being passed to copy-editors, he says. But at Nature Physics, which covers disciplines in which LaTeX use is widespread, the editors are more flexible about document formatting. “LaTeX is just something that physicists ‘do’,” explains chief editor Andrea Taroni. “Trying to get them to do otherwise is like trying to herd cats.”

Nice video! Thanks for your introduction to LaTex!

The other huge advantage LaTeX has over any other program is that, because you deal with a plain-text file, you have no issue with very large documents with loads of references or figures. I've seen Word crash or bug countless times even with small documents. You never experience that with LaTeX. Plus, dealing with bibliography, cross reference, citation style is just ridiculously easy.

Props to Prof. Raja, who sent me here. 🙌

I love your videos! Keep it up!!

It is helpful to also learn PlainTeX and its basic concepts like glue, badness, boxes, output routines, etc., because then you can tweak little things. (Like, for example, if you do ightskip=0pt plus 2em your text will be ragged, but only slightly so it won't be distracting. Try that in Microsoft Word!) If you learn PlainTeX, you'll be able to make your own mini-LaTeX macro package with which you'll be able to write documents. It's actually really interesting to learn.

what and why of luatex?

thats not how you pronounce Bach, at least not in german (which should be the only way) but since 'ch' can sound like at least 4 different sounds you shall be forgiven:)