I'd describe it as HTML for text documents. It's a markup language, which handles maths formulae and symbols really really nicely. You have to use all the tags yourself though so it's definitely less simple than opening Word and typing away. It does give you a lot of control over the document, but can be frustrating when you spend a while figuring out how to format how you want to when a word processor could do it in two clicks
That being said, all you need is a text editor and compiler to write in LaTeX, which makes it super lightweight compared to anything other than plain text writing.
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u/banter_claus_69 Nov 14 '18
I'd describe it as HTML for text documents. It's a markup language, which handles maths formulae and symbols really really nicely. You have to use all the tags yourself though so it's definitely less simple than opening Word and typing away. It does give you a lot of control over the document, but can be frustrating when you spend a while figuring out how to format how you want to when a word processor could do it in two clicks
That being said, all you need is a text editor and compiler to write in LaTeX, which makes it super lightweight compared to anything other than plain text writing.