I have been a MathType devotee since it was first introduced (about 1987)
for the Mac. I still use it for labeling curves in figures that are to be
pasted in a handout or exam. When MathType became available for Windows
users I sung its praises. It is the basis of the equation editor in MS
Word and is easy to use even though at times I find it a bit cumbersome.
I began using TeX in 1990 and LaTeX in 1993. Give me LaTeX anytime. I
don't think that you will ever get me off it. LaTeX it easy to learn?
Well, it certainly is not as easy as MS Word or Wordperfect but the quality
of the output is much much better. As several people have mentioned it is
not WYSIWYG. Many of my colleagues use Scientific Workplace (SW). Again a
vast improvement over Word and Wordperfect. I tried to use SW and found it
frustrating. But I think that is because I already knew LaTeX. SW comes
with a host of preformatted forms for exams, letters, articles, etc. (Of
course, none of them were in the format either my colleagues or I used.)
It also has a version of MathType built in. (I'm not sure if it is really
MathType or just looks and feels like it.) SW comes with a memory price.
The Mac version requires something like 64MB and I assume the Windows
version needs about the same. My version of LaTeX uses less than 8MB.
Does LaTeX require a lot of keystrokes as Sandy mentioned? He said that to
produce y=(x^2+9)/(x-3) you type $y=\dfrac{x^{2}+9}{x-3}$. He's partially
correct. George pointed out that "you need $y=\frac{x^2+9}{x-3}$ but this
will get you a two layered fraction with no parentheses and a horizontal
vinculum
making the fraction. To get a one-line fraction you would type this,
exactly: $y=(x^2+9)/(x-3)$." The only difference is the addition of the
two $ signs. But, the $ signs tell LaTeX to italicize the y and x and to
add some space around the = sign. The result looks just like it does in
your texts. Is this a lot of extra work? Perhaps, but for me this is a
small price to pay for the additional quality you get with LaTeX.
John
John C. Peterson
Chattanooga State Technical Community College
4501 Amnicola Highway
Chattanooga, Tennessee 37406-1097
Phone: (423) 697-2404
Fax: (423) 531-1096
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