Ah, LaTeX.  I dabbled in it 30 years ago, and it's perpetually too far down my list of things to actually learn it.  

I've always treated it as a fantastic tool that I am happy to help folks acquire and willing to cursorily support, but beyond that, they need to learn and become the experts.  That is not unlike a lot of other software in that there are limits to what we are willing to teach/support.  We can't take an all-or-nothing approach to these things; there must be a grey area in the middle.  How do you deal with users who want to create Office macros for example?  

For all power-user features/software, I have to assume that all but the most well-funded IT departments/libraries either:

1. block features/software (and stifle potential user creativity/production).    
2. point users in the general direction and possibly link to some popular/useful, public documentation.

In reality, it is probably a mix of those two.  Some applications/features are much more dangerous and likely to create legal issues than others and should be blocked.  At the same time, *fully* supporting every feature of a limited whitelist of software is both a Sisyphean task and antithetical to the learning and exploration goals of libraries and/or academia.

That's my $.02,
Erich



On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 11:32, Dan Johnson eloquently inscribed:

> 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
>