LaTeX: A diamond in the rough

Without a major Linux kernel release, user-friendliness and wordprocessing made some of the best news in the open source world lastyear.

The free software communities focused much attention on StarOffice, WordPerfect, AbiWord, KWord, and the like. Meanwhile,most have ignored one of the best-kept secrets in the world of documentcreation. Though it ships with almost every Linux distribution, and hasbeen around longer than Linux itself, the LaTeX typesetting system remainsa hidden gem.

Quite likely the most powerful document creation and management systemavailable, LaTeX (and its underlying typesetting engine, TeX) is favoredin academia and is the required format for many scholarly papers. It takestypesetting issues such as line-breaks and inter-character spacing veryseriously, and it arguably has no peer in the task of formatting complexmath equations. It's been ported to just about every major platform and abunch of minor ones.

So why isn't LaTeX right up there with all the other word processors?Well, if you think that Linux has a problem with user-friendliness, waituntil you try LaTeX. Calling LaTeX "esoteric" is a bit ofunderstatement.

Let's start with the name. It's "LaTeX"; the capital T and X aredeliberate, and in fact the whole word is meant to be a ligature,such as æ(which can be produced easily in the body text of a LaTeX document, ofcourse). Even the pronunciation isn't what you'd expect; newbies pronounceit like the material that surgical gloves are made of; those in the knowsay "LAH-tek".

Then there's the way you run it. Like a C language program, LaTeXdocuments are created with your favorite text editor, looking a bit likeraw HTML or WordPerfect documents in Reveal Codes mode. These files, whencomplete, are then run through a processor to create formatted output. Theresulting "dvi" (device independent) binary file can be easilychurned into PostScript, or PDF files, or X Window displays, or many otherprinter and typsetting machine formats.

Have I scared you off yet? If not, there's more. To really grasp the powerof the LaTeX typesetting system, as well as the TeX engine underneath it,and all the other components associated with LaTeX and TeX, you prettywell need to immerse yourself, and that's not easy.

LaTeX documentation comes as a melange of detailed but bland referencemanuals, and tutorials that are well-meaning yet overwhelm mostfirst-timers with too much information about LaTeX's innards. The LaTeXCompanion book is chock-full of information, but it assumes thatyou're already knee-deep in the product. The book's friendly cover drawingof a St. Bernard hides the fact that his keg contains not brandy, butinstructions for building the still. And as full of useful stuff as it is,if it were any drier it would have a cactus growing out of it. In terms ofuser-friendliness, LaTeX is where Linux was half a dozen years ago.

So much for the bad news. For all the headaches I've described above,LaTeX can be worth mastering. It's well integrated with the Web,PostScript, and XML. The distribution used with most Linux systems, teTeX, iscomplete and well laid out. And while it's one of the largest packages ona typical Linux distro, it still weighs in far lighter than WordPerfect ormost other word processors.

The good news is that LaTeX, like Linux, is itself getting a friendlyface. In LaTeX, as in Linux, the addition of the GUI is an enhancement andcomplement to, not a replacement for, the traditional way of doingthings.

The key here is LyX, a GUIfront end that makes LaTeX look and work like a word processor. LyX hastwo versions -- the originalgeneric X Window version, and KLyX which isoptimized for the KDE desktop. Indeed, LyX doesn't call itself WYSIWYG(what you see is what you get) as much as WYSIWYM (what you see is whatyou mean). According to KLyX developer Matthias Ettrich, KLyX willeventually go away as future versions of LyX will provide front ends forKDE2, GNOME and other desktops.

Finally, to make up for the difficulty of following the documentation,there's a significant user community eager to help: the TeX Users Group has many usefulpublications, self-help forums, and downloads. While it's far from whatI'd call the perfect tutorial, try thisintroduction (a large PDF file) as a starting point. Then have a lookat LyX, and you're on your way.

If you're really into documents, you'll soon come to appreciate LaTeK's acquired taste.

How do you process your documents? Tell Evan in the TalkBack below or inthe ZDNetLinux Forum. Or write to Evan directly at evan@starnix.com.Without a major Linux kernel release, user-friendliness and wordprocessing made some of the best news in the open source world lastyear.

The free software communities focused much attention on StarOffice, WordPerfect, AbiWord, KWord, and the like. Meanwhile,most have ignored one of the best-kept secrets in the world of documentcreation. Though it ships with almost every Linux distribution, and hasbeen around longer than Linux itself, the LaTeX typesetting system remainsa hidden gem.

Quite likely the most powerful document creation and management systemavailable, LaTeX (and its underlying typesetting engine, TeX) is favoredin academia and is the required format for many scholarly papers. It takestypesetting issues such as line-breaks and inter-character spacing veryseriously, and it arguably has no peer in the task of formatting complexmath equations. It's been ported to just about every major platform and abunch of minor ones.

So why isn't LaTeX right up there with all the other word processors?Well, if you think that Linux has a problem with user-friendliness, waituntil you try LaTeX. Calling LaTeX "esoteric" is a bit ofunderstatement.

Let's start with the name. It's "LaTeX"; the capital T and X aredeliberate, and in fact the whole word is meant to be a ligature,such as æ(which can be produced easily in the body text of a LaTeX document, ofcourse). Even the pronunciation isn't what you'd expect; newbies pronounceit like the material that surgical gloves are made of; those in the knowsay "LAH-tek".

Then there's the way you run it. Like a C language program, LaTeXdocuments are created with your favorite text editor, looking a bit likeraw HTML or WordPerfect documents in Reveal Codes mode. These files, whencomplete, are then run through a processor to create formatted output. Theresulting "dvi" (device independent) binary file can be easilychurned into PostScript, or PDF files, or X Window displays, or many otherprinter and typsetting machine formats.

Have I scared you off yet? If not, there's more. To really grasp the powerof the LaTeX typesetting system, as well as the TeX engine underneath it,and all the other components associated with LaTeX and TeX, you prettywell need to immerse yourself, and that's not easy.

LaTeX documentation comes as a melange of detailed but bland referencemanuals, and tutorials that are well-meaning yet overwhelm mostfirst-timers with too much information about LaTeX's innards. The LaTeXCompanion book is chock-full of information, but it assumes thatyou're already knee-deep in the product. The book's friendly cover drawingof a St. Bernard hides the fact that his keg contains not brandy, butinstructions for building the still. And as full of useful stuff as it is,if it were any drier it would have a cactus growing out of it. In terms ofuser-friendliness, LaTeX is where Linux was half a dozen years ago.

So much for the bad news. For all the headaches I've described above,LaTeX can be worth mastering. It's well integrated with the Web,PostScript, and XML. The distribution used with most Linux systems, teTeX, iscomplete and well laid out. And while it's one of the largest packages ona typical Linux distro, it still weighs in far lighter than WordPerfect ormost other word processors.

The good news is that LaTeX, like Linux, is itself getting a friendlyface. In LaTeX, as in Linux, the addition of the GUI is an enhancement andcomplement to, not a replacement for, the traditional way of doingthings.

The key here is LyX, a GUIfront end that makes LaTeX look and work like a word processor. LyX hastwo versions -- the originalgeneric X Window version, and KLyX which isoptimized for the KDE desktop. Indeed, LyX doesn't call itself WYSIWYG(what you see is what you get) as much as WYSIWYM (what you see is whatyou mean). According to KLyX developer Matthias Ettrich, KLyX willeventually go away as future versions of LyX will provide front ends forKDE2, GNOME and other desktops.

Finally, to make up for the difficulty of following the documentation,there's a significant user community eager to help: the TeX Users Group has many usefulpublications, self-help forums, and downloads. While it's far from whatI'd call the perfect tutorial, try thisintroduction (a large PDF file) as a starting point. Then have a lookat LyX, and you're on your way.

If you're really into documents, you'll soon come to appreciate LaTeX's acquired taste.

How do you process your documents? Tell Evan in the TalkBack below or inthe ZDNetLinux Forum. Or write to Evan directly at evan@starnix.com.