Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 31053
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2025/07/10 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/10    

2004/6/29-30 [Computer/SW/Languages/Misc] UID:31053 Activity:high
6/28    is it useful/essential to learn Latex? I'm pretty happy with MS Word
        and Powerpoint but occassionally people make fun of me and I kind of
        feel left out and wanna learn Latex, but I'm not sure if it's
        worthwhile to spend the time learning it. thx.
        \_ I don't think I've ever found it useful, and I know very very few
           people in industry that have any use for it.  Perhaps it's different
           in academia if you're serious about publishing something (lecture
           notes, text books, etc).  It's a tool, man.  If a tool serves a
           need you have, then learn it.  It sounds like the people you hang
           with are kind of silly.
        \_ If people are making fun of you for not knowing LaTeX, those
           people really need to get a life. Meet girls, pick up a language,
           explore the world, learn about other cultures, see live theater,
           read a book. There's so much more to life than learning LaTeX.
           If you have nothing better to do then knock yourself out.
           \_ Shut up Paolo.
              \_ Uhm, even if it is Paolo, his comment seems pretty sensible.
                 Dumbass.
           \- you should learn troff -me macros.
              \_ my first resume was ms macros with tbl.  those were good times.
        \_ I use LaTeX as my main way of composing a document of which
           appearance is important.  The only time I run word is when
           I have to deal with a word.doc someone else sent me.  Although
           I hope the world does not revolve around MS Word and its
           proprietary file format, I don't think the reasons your offered
           justify learning latex.  (It sounds like a troll actually.)
           BTW, I never learned latex in the sense of taking a course or
           sitting down and read a few chapters of a book.  Nobody does.
           You just look at an existing document or draft and emulate.  That's
           the advantage of LaTeX.  I knew all about Word 10 years ago but
           since I stopped using it, now I forgot how to do many things in it.
        \_ I need to learn it for my work.  (LLNL)  Really, for large
           documents where layout is important and there are a lot of
           graphs and pictures, Word becomes unuasable.  It got so bad
           that my version of Word XP would crash whenever I tried to
           insert a text box.  It's just the wrong tool for the job.
           -jrleek
           \_ well, yes; Word is not a layout tool, it's a word processor.
              If you need layout, use InDesign or Quark.  Or better, do it in
              XHTML.  -tom
              \_ vi and troff.  real men settle for nothing less.
2025/07/10 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/10    

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