LaTeX

[maliciel]

Any students actually use this?

I'm only just starting school, but I thought it might be useful to learn LaTeX for my papers and whatnot. Figured an opinion poll would be in order. Have you used it? Is it worth the time taken to learn the syntax? Is it awesome?

[nachdenki]

I didn't use it so far and was fairly annoyed by those dudes who religiously kept talking about how awesome it is (usually those free software people orz) but well
for compsci and math it should useful.
I was about to give it a try on my linux but got bored while reading how to get things working so I lost motivation to get into it.

for short:
Have you used it? nope
Is it worth the time taken to learn the syntax? only if you need it
Is it awesome? maybe~

[3headedknight]

I have taken a class where the teacher required us to use some typesetting system for our assignments.  I don't know whether you'll have any professors like that, but it might be a good idea to learn LaTeX.  Actually, what I ended up doing was using LyX as a front-end.  Might be a good idea to check it out.  Even LyX is kind of a pain to learn, but at least it's tolerable. Although I think I ended editing some of the markup manually (LyX lets you do that from within its interface) when LyX wasn't getting it right.

[ziggurat]

In my uni time, there is this nerd FOSS dude who looks like penguin giving a lecture on open source. He told us the awesomeness of LaTeX, but it doesn't convince me to use it Seriously, FOSS need better representative to convince people using open source tools. Maybe some hot geeky girls Btw, I never use it, just wanna rant a bit in mal's thread :3

[yokolover120]

So far in my first two years of school I haven't used Latex. And I don't think I am gonna use in my last two years. The stuff you can make with it looks pretty cool so like if you want to make cool documents then you should learn it. I mean you have nothing to lose and you would not be wasting your time if you learn it.

[Iamabowl]

I've used it, it's great for writing resumes. Also I hear if you need something published some publications will just send you a latex thing and you edit it and send it back.

One of my friends used it as a way to "cheat" on a physics test. The teacher allowed 1 crib sheet, and he used latex to print out all the formulas really tiny on a sheet of paper.

[leavekuda]

I have try it on past but finally I use open office

[123SillyBlast]

Have you used it?
Yes, I have. Both for assignments and for private stuff.

Is it worth the time taken to learn the syntax?
If you only ever write just simple text and your documents lack any more complicated structure, you probably won't be needing it (unless you're required to use it for some reason). If, however, you have to typeset a lot of mathematical formulas and other complicated notation, it's probably worth learning. It's also great for saving time, as you can define your own commands, shortcuts and environments. I guess if you think like a programmer, LaTeX might appeal to you and save you some time.

Is it awesome?
It's powerful and you can produce beautiful results with it if you know how to. I wouldn't call it awesome, though. I find it rather antique, in many ways. Some very simple stuff can be incredibly hard to do in LaTeX; on the other hand some very complicated stuff can be done quite easily in LaTeX. It's great, but it could be a lot better. It would be awesome if someone would come along and produce a typesetting language that is as powerful as LaTeX but more elegant.

[Dronak]

Yes, I used LaTeX often through undergrad and grad school, and used it for my dissertation.  It's probably field-dependent though -- for example, science and engineering fields would probably use LaTeX much more than humanities fields.  Learning the basic syntax isn't too hard, I think; kind of like with HTML.  For more complicated stuff, you'll probably need to look up how to do things, but for simple stuff, you should be able to learn the basic syntax without too much trouble.  As for how awesome it is, that's a matter of opinion.  Some things I like about it:  it's plain text -- no file format / reader program issues, that makes it easy to send, the file sizes are usually smaller than in say a Word document, and if you're familiar with at least some of the syntax, you should be able to read and understand the file from the source without having to actually process it into a DVI, PS, PDF, or whatever.  However, I don't use it much nowadays -- my work uses Word documents most of the time.

[seggahme]

LyX - do you use it? no need learn anything, just plain mouse latexing.