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Some of my colleagues teach it in conjunction with our Software Carpentries stuff (but there's no formal Carpentries approved lesson yet). I have experimented with it for open scholarship publishing purposes. Frankly, the more I think about it, the less I think it is worth dealing with. Overleaf is nice, I guess, but very expensive. There are projects like Tectonic (https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/) where they have taken a lot of the crud (for lack of a better word) and also dropped the kind of elitism that comes with knowing e.g. that it's la-tec and not latex. I suppose you could say it's 'LaTeX but for "normal" people.' I don't mean this to come across as a criticism of LaTeX users, just to relay the frustration some of us feel when dealing with it...some of my best friends use LaTeX... all best, ander ----- ander kierig Web Application Developer University of Minnesota Libraries https://www.lib.umn.edu they/them On 2023-07-18 at 10:32 (-0500) Dan Johnson wrote: > Dear List, > > How do you all deal with LaTeX? The LaTeX Project describes it as a > "high-quality typesetting system," but it *looks* similar to a few > different software paradigms, and this makes it hard to figure out who > on a > university campus should be supporting it. > > For example, one could make the case that it's an advanced, low-level > form > of word processing, which should therefore be supported with training > and > problem solving by central IT, who cover Microsoft Word and Google > Docs. > But it's much more than WYSIWYG word processing, and support for IT > would > be a very heavy lift. > > So maybe instead you think of it as a markup system. In that case, > perhaps > it's the library's digital scholarship center that should be providing > support. Yet, it's not really used for the purposes of scholarly > annotation > and digital presentation of primary sources that TEI is. > > Since it's used for creating beautifully-looking articles and books, > perhaps it's a scholarly communication tool, and hence the schol comm > division of the library should support it. But the biggest use case > may be > dissertation formatting, in which case perhaps a university's graduate > school or office of research should take charge (especially if they > provide > a dissertation template). > > But then, the software is especially good at formatting mathematical > notations, and indeed, the vast majority of dissertations submitted > with > LaTeX formatting come from the school of science, so perhaps it is > scientific computing software. In that case, maybe the college of > science's > departmental IT units should bear the brunt of support. > > The final option, it seems to me, is to call it "just one of those > very > helpful things," like regex, that you won't see in any formal or > informal > learning environment, and so you have to figure it out on your own to > be in > the know. > > How do you all parcel this out? > > Best, > Dan > > -- > *Daniel Johnson, Ph.D.* > *Interim Co-Director, Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship * > *English; Digital Humanities**; and Film, Television, and Theatre * > *Librarian* > > *University of Notre Dame* > 250C Hesburgh Library > Notre Dame, IN 46556 > o: 574-631-3457 > e: [log in to unmask]