An Efficiency Comparison of Latex vs. Word (2014)
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An Efficiency Comparison of Latex vs. Word (2014)
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Re: An Efficiency Comparison of Latex vs. Word (2014)
#2> On most measures, expert LaTeX users performed even worse than novice Word users.
Big Oof
> LaTeX users, however, more often report enjoying using their respective software.
Ok so there's that as a highly redeeming feature =)
Re: An Efficiency Comparison of Latex vs. Word (2014)
#3> On most measures, expert LaTeX users performed even worse than novice Word users. Big Oof > LaTeX users, however, more often report enjoying using their respective software. Ok so there's that as a highly redeeming feature =)
Buying a big mac is more time efficient than cooking a hamburger, too.
Re: An Efficiency Comparison of Latex vs. Word (2014)
#4LaTeX by itself may be less productive than Word, but it has (at least for me) several advantages that make it for me more productive:
- The standard unix tools (E.g. grep) do work really well with LaTeX, if I have to find something. I would now know how to find a string in like 30-40 .doc(x) files
- Works with git
- Programmatically generating LaTeX is really simple as it is just text (I use this e.g. in my Vala Project. Sure for other language there are libraries to generate .docx files, but LaTeX works for me here better, as I generate dozens of diagrams and so on)
- FLOSS and fully documented
- Documentation is far better (E.g. How do I do X? The results for Word are often spam-like)
Re: An Efficiency Comparison of Latex vs. Word (2014)
#5(2014)
Re: An Efficiency Comparison of Latex vs. Word (2014)
#6So you have 1000 man hours of research and you worry about how long it takes to write the report? As far as grammar goes, yeah I guess the grammar checking of Word helps. The number of words produced is a bit of a strange metric unless we measure the importance/quality of research by the pound.
Re: An Efficiency Comparison of Latex vs. Word (2014)
#7I'm not sure it was a good test... Latex users do appear to be significantly faster at mathematical typing... which is obviously Latex's strong suit. What Latex is in general weaker than word at arbitrary formatting... its goal is to provide semantic markeup for large scale academic writing. Also, apparently its difficult to use Latex's table system compared to word (though tables in word are particularly easy!)
Re: An Efficiency Comparison of Latex vs. Word (2014)
#8I'm not sure it was a good test... Latex users do appear to be significantly faster at mathematical typing... which is obviously Latex's strong suit. What Latex is in general weaker than word at arbitrary formatting... its goal is to provide semantic markeup for large scale academic writing. Also, apparently its difficult to use Latex's table system compared to word (though tables in word are particularly easy!)
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Re: An Efficiency Comparison of Latex vs. Word (2014)
#9Yeah until word supports vim bindings it's not going to be very efficient.
Re: An Efficiency Comparison of Latex vs. Word (2014)
#10"Efficiency" in this study is measured by counting errors in reproduced texts and that is a fair operationalization for "typesetting". Yet, it seems that the design omits a central variable as there is no information on spellcheckers. While its a easy default in Word, you can only speculate about the usage in thr Latex groups..