That's obviously not an option for everything, but I've used it for everything from internal documentation to slides to blog posts.
I've found that successful use of LaTeX requires you to avoid compiling on a regular basis. When I write something in LaTeX, I chunk the time I spend on formatting/compiling, so that it doesn't interfere with writing. I also find it helpful to construct multi-file templates that enable modularity and reuse.
The only time I really use a GUI is for formatting equations, since being able to see the change right away is very helpful.
It will auto compile your changes, as well as hide the messy intermediate files in the compilation from your directory which I appreciate.
Has anyone heard of professional use of LaTeX outside of the scientific fields?
I've seen a lot of good examples of the power of LaTeX but all seems ot have been made by scientists. And I tried to convince my girlfriend who is in the edition/layout field (not sure of the correct name). she already knew LaTeX (at my surprise) and she thought the examples were unimpressives. She doesn't anybody in her field using it professionally.
So I was wondering if her experience was specific or it was really unused outsite science. Any feedback on this one?
Using LaTeX effectively requires the same ways of thinking needed in order to write code. For people who aren't used to doing this, adjusting from Word to LaTeX is not going to be easy.
In the professional publishing fields, editors have overcome the shortcomings of Word in a completely different way - using advanced GUI tools that have hundreds of options and settings that you have to learn, but that let you have instant feedback on your decisions. Admittedly, programs such as InDesign can actually make prettier documents than LaTeX, but the comparative amount of effort you need to invest makes it rather a bad tradeoff for someone who already knows LaTeX.
LaTeX is good at making consistently beautiful documents fast, while professional publishing tools let you invest lots of effort into getting something even more beautiful, or downright ugly. For the scientist, LaTeX wins easily, but for someone whose primary job is to make things as pretty as they can be, it is not so.
The biggest caveat I've seen to its use are ballooning file sizes (meh), and (more importantly) leaking information. But I also thought recent versions of Word made it more prominent to discard tracking information when doing a Save/As.
"what you see is what you mean" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYM
Do you have recommendations for a word processor which
- Focuses on writing text documents, doesn't attempt to do everything
- Is visual, because sometimes it's painful to go through cycle of compilation with LaTeX
- Has a minimalistic UI that focuses on semantics; which lets you mark things as sections, titles, emphasis, etc. Fonts, colors, are handled separately within a template editor
- Ideally, allows for real-time collaborative editing