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]