World

I have always wondered about LATEX which seemed like a haphazard display of letterings, with the same juvenile undertones of L33T- and nigga-speak which irks me to no end. Why would an otherwise gifted bunch of individuals indulge in nigga-speak? See here for one such community. http://www.dasdc.net/forum/index.php But LATEX is none of that sort. It is simply trying to point a point about its typesetting capabilities in a world completely swamped by Microsoft Word. Whereas Microsoft Word forces us to adhere to a rigid format–how many of us have torn at our hair in frustration at the refusal of Word to align our text properly–LATEX essentially hands you a blank canvas with which to text out a beautiful document of words, figures ... and spaces. Yup, that’s right. Space is a key concept in LATEX creating a framework much like what silence does for music and empty canvas does for art. Of course Word proponents would counter that it is a not a WYSIWYG(what you see is what you get) editor, and that we are taking steps backwards with LATEX. But until WYSIWYG comes up with a less flawed model, LATEX remains the de facto editor in academia. Oh yea, LATEX pronounces as Lay-Tech. X represents the Greek letter χ or chi. Why so? I haven’t the foggiest idea. To get started on LATEX, download it from http://www.tug.org/protext/. It’s under the GNU licencing. In other words, its makers are more concerned with making the world a better place and not for commercial purposes.

1