Discover LaTeX
Because it's better when it's better.
Why would you use LaTeX?
Discover the dark side of Word.
LaTeX is a typographer
LaTeX is actually a set of high-level commands based on the TeX language, invented by Donald Knuth in 1977 to publish his masterpiece, The Art Of Computer Programming. The first edition of the work was printed using the hot lead technique, which was fine for him. For the second edition though, his editor switched to photocomposition process, which Knuth did not like. That is why he wanted to use a computer based approach, but as he couldn't find any word processing program meeting his expectations, he decided to create his own, in a way that respects every subtelty and typographic convention born because of the old mechanical tools that were once used to type, and forgotten by a new generation of electronic.
His program was created to optimize reading comfort and respect the aspect and the content of documents.
LaTeX is clever
In contrast to the other word processing programs, LaTeX is guided by a philosophy called What You See Is What You Mean: a LaTeX document is a source file containing code, using a language vaguely similar to html. The key difference with HTML is that LaTeX does not take formats or styles as input, but semantic functions: in LaTeX, you do not say this phrase is in italics, but this phrase is important, and the compiler changes the fonts accordingly.
The source code is then compiled by LaTeX, creating the final result. Thanks to this operation, LaTeX is able to manage on its own the structure of your documents, to automatically create tables of contents, cross-references, indexes, etc. Moreover, the user is able to program and define his own commands, allowing him to gain a considerable amount of time when writing long and complex documents.
Best of all: LaTeX is Turing-complete
LaTeX is beautiful
Thanks to the default font of LaTeX, created by Donald Knuth himself, Computer Modern Roman (and its evolutions), your documents won't remain unnoticed. A perfect harmony between text and mathematics made LaTeX the main software regarding scientific publications.
Instead of slaving away looking for double spaces and any other typographic kink tolerated by Word, you will be able to take your time admiring a well laid out document written in LaTeX: everything has been thought out for optimal reading comfort both before and after the code is compiled.
Convinced?
Then go see our recommended steps to install LaTeX by clicking on the button below.
Not convinced?
If you are not convinced, here is an article written by Donald Knuth and Michael Plass to describe line wrapping in TeX. It is a very complex but efficient algorithm that (obviously) is more complicated than a simple greedy algorithm. What for? To optimize type color (the perceived color of text when in peripheral vision). This greatly improves reading ease and comfort.