LATEX Information
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Overview
I use LATEX on a Windows machine with the MiKTeX implementation. MiKTeX is a distribution of LATEX that is fairly straight-forward to set up and use. LATEX requires a text editor. The text editor I use is WinEdt; the two work very well together. WinEdt is a quality text editor designed to be used as a front end for LATEX. MiKTeX is freely distributed under the Debian Free Software Guidelines, whereas WinEdt is shareware that must be purchased after 30 days. LATEX has contributors world wide that add to the wide variety of packages that exist. These packages add a great deal of flexibility when type setting documents. The beauty of LATEX is that it allows users to write a document without much concern for the formatting, as LATEX does most of the formatting automatically with instructions provided from a style file (which exist for nearly every disipline/style). Plus, the documents look great and are literally of professional quality. In fact, many publishers (e.g., books, journal articles, media) use LATEX to typeset publications.For technical writing, the use of LATEX from the beginning reduces the likelihood of errors in published work, because a third part y is not typesetting the document and thus inputting unfamiliar equations. The publisher thus has to be willing to accept LATEX submissions in order for what you submit to be what is published. I've found that some documents that are typeset by third partys have numerous errors (in fact, this was the impetus for the creation of TEX, the LATEX predecessor, in the late 1970s (some history). The bad part with a third part typesetter is first finding all of the errors on the page proofs and then hoping that the typesetter makes the corrections you note properly. For some reason some journals will not send the corrected pageproofs and you just have to cross your fingers that everything turns out correctly (From experience I can tell you that crossing your fingers and hoping for a new correctly typeset version does not always happen!). LATEX was designed to be used for technical documents, and because of the desire to deal with equations from the outset, as opposed to an afterthought like popular "productivity suites," typeseting equations that display properly is a huge advantage. Plus, inputting those equations is straightforward via a simple set of commands (it turns our that this is much better than inserting an "object" and pointing-and-clicking through a limited set of the symbols). Contributed packages (i.e., add-ons) are stored at the Comprehensive TeX Archival Network (CTAN), and at this location an enormous amount of LATEX related material is available. Unlike older versions of MiKTeX, more modern versions do not require the user to install packages manually, as this is done automatically when an uninstalled package is called upon (making it very easy to get the necessary packages almost effortlessly).