Comments on: LaTeX, content, and structure

By: Technical Writing News – Nov 20th | I Heart Technical Writing

Technical Writing News – Nov 20th | I Heart Technical Writing — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 05:02:01 +0000

[...] LaTeX, content, and structure [...]

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:13:36 +0000

@Janet, like you I never use or recommend LaTeX for corporate documentation. That said, I’ve seen it done and done quite well. And someone created a LaTeX class to mirror the look and feel of the books put out by No Starch Press.

But for other projects, I do a bit of tweakery (not sure if that’s a real word or not) in the header to get the look and feel that I want from a particular document class. I just wish CTAN included graphical thumbnails of what a document typeset with a particular class looks like. Not all classes include a sample PDF.

By: Janet Swisher

Janet Swisher — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:23:01 +0000

“You can easily change the look using classes.” That assumes that a class exists that provides the look that you want. If it doesn’t, you have to tweak one until it does. I did this many years ago for my (now-ex-)husband’s dissertation, because there wasn’t a class that matched his university’s formatting guidelines. I’d never recommend LaTeX for corporate documentation, because even if I could match the company’s look-and-feel, probably no one but me could maintain it.

LaTeX’s math typesetting is unbeatable, and there are now plugins to provide just LaTeX equations in other, easier to use systems, like WordPress, OpenOffice.org, and Confluence.

By: Technical Writing News – Nov 20th | I Heart Tech Docs, Ivan Walsh, Technical Writer

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:30:01 +0000

[...] LaTeX, content, and structure [...]

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:50:09 +0000

@Lana, I’ve never used LaTeX for documentation (aside from some tech writing samples when I started my career all those years ago). It just doesn’t work for me that way. Like you, I’m a big fan of DocBook — no matter what the DITA folks say

LaTeX is great for typesetting math. But I’ve only done that for some consulting I did years ago. I mainly use LaTeX for writing reports and things like that. And for several aborted personal projects. Little, if anything, beats LaTeX for the accuracy and sheer beauty of its typesetting, though. Just wish tables weren’t such a pain …

By: Lana Brindley

Lana Brindley — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:15:39 +0000

I used to use LaTeX in my previous job, and loved it. But then I was introduced to DocBook XML and found it so much more logical and easy. LaTeX, I think, is still very useful if the stuff you’re writing is high on mathematical or scientific notation. But for what I do, Docbook XML fits the bill nicely. Subsequently, my LaTeX is a little rusty these days too (she says as she eyes her copy of “The LaTeX Companion” on the bookshelf). perhaps I need a little personal project as well, just to brush up

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