LaTeX and MathType (Equation Editor) for Scientific Documents

What is LaTeX and why?

Before answering this, one should know what is TeX. Let's see what Wikipedia says!

TeX (pronounced /ˈtɛx/ as in Greek, often /tɛk/ in English) is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth. Together with the METAFONT language for font description and the Computer Modern family of typefaces, it was designed with two main goals in mind: to allow anybody to produce high-quality books using a reasonable amount of effort, and to provide a system that would give the exact same results on all computers, now and in the future. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as TeX.

TeX is one popular means by which to typeset complex mathematical formulae; it has been noted as one of the most sophisticated digital typographical systems in the world. TeX is popular in academia, especially in mathematics, computer science, engineering, and physics. It has largely displaced Unix troff, the other favored formatter, in many Unix installations, which use both for different purposes. It is now also being used for many other typesetting tasks, especially in the form of LaTeX and other template packages.

So, TeX is like a programming language, but it could be used only for creating nice looking scientific documents which includes complex symbols and character sets. Donald Knuth created it when he found the inferior typesetting quality of science documents those days prepared. He faced this typesetting problem while he was preparing his classical "Art of Computer Programming".

Isn't this interesting?

Knuth has kept a very detailed log of all the bugs he has corrected and changes he has made in the program since 1982; as of 2008^[update], the list contains 427 entries, not including the version modification that should be done after his death as the final change in TeX.^[24][25] Donald Knuth offers monetary awards to people who find and report a bug in TeX. The award per bug started at $2.56 (one "hexadecimal dollar"^[26]) and doubled every year until it was frozen at its current value of $327.68. Knuth, however, has lost relatively little money as there have been very few bugs claimed. In addition, recipients have been known to frame their check as proof that they found a bug in TeX rather than cashing it.^[27][28] Due to scammers finding scanned copies of his checks on the internet and using them to try to drain his bank account, Knuth no longer sends out real checks, but those who submit bug reports can get credit at The Bank of San Serriffe instead.

That is enough about TeX!

LaTeX was created by Leslie Lamport based on TeX to help people to easily create TeX documents.

Again quoting wikipedia,

LaTeX (pronounced /ˈleɪtɛk/, /ˈleɪtɛx/, /ˈlɑːtɛx/, or /ˈlɑːtɛk/) is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to create a document in LaTeX, a .tex file must be created using some form of text editor. While most text editors can be used to create a LaTeX document, a number of editors have been created specifically for working with LaTeX.

LaTeX is most widely used by mathematicians, scientists, engineers, philosophers, linguists, economists and other scholars in academia. As a primary or intermediate format, e.g., translating DocBook and other XML-based formats to PDF, LaTeX is used because of the high quality of typesetting achievable by TeX. The typesetting system offers programmable desktop publishing features and extensive facilities for automating most aspects of typesetting and desktop publishing, including numbering and cross-referencing, tables and figures, page layout and bibliographies.

There is a question arising now. Why the common document preparing WYSIWYG softwares like Microsoft Word (which is a part of the their popular package Microsoft Office) or its open source alternative Open Office cannot be used for preparing scientific documents instead of using (initially) complex LaTeX?

Answer cannot be a single sentence. There are a lot of comparisons that we have to perform.

1. If you are are trying to prepare an ordinary letter or a document which does not conain any scientific symbols like Pi, Sigma, Matrices etc. never use LaTeX. Word or Open Office writer can serve you the best.

2. If you want to put some scientific symbols, you may still use MS Word with the support of its built in Equation Editor. But you will quickly find that Equation Editor is not sufficient for many things and you have to buy its higher, professional version MathType (a product of Design Science, dessci.com, see the right pannel for links.)

Screenshot of MathType GUI

3. If you want to prepare a document containing a lot of scientific symbols, you are in trouble once you start using MS Word. First of all, you may not able to send this file so easily to any of your collegues because of the huge file size resulting from the use of MathType, secondly, your collegue also must have bought and installed MathType for editing/properly viewing your file.

4. MS Word or MathType is not free. You have to pay for it; for every updated versions too!

5. Mathtype is quite useful if you want to see what you really want. This has a great GUI. But in LaTeX, you have to use another thirdparty editor, compile it, open with a DVI viewer (if this is your default format) and check whether the output file contains the exact expression you had in your mind. There is no realtime verification of expressions that you enter in LaTeX.

A details comparison of MS World/Open Office  and LaTeX can be found at the site openwetware.org.

Another one could be found at http://rik0.wordpress.com/2005/12/13/latex-emacs-vs-mathtype-word/.

Next question is how to get and install these softwares and how to learn it. Using MS Word/Open Office is trivial for even beginners. Using Mathtype is also not that difficult. But LaTeX, even though you don't have to become a TeXpert, you should learn a few commands!

Getting MS Ofice is not a big problem, ask your hardware/software vendor and he will sell it to you for a few thousand bugs. If you want the open source version and save some money, download Open Office from their official site free of cost.

You may download a trial version of MathType and install it by double clicking on it(The standard way of using windows exe installors). After 30 days either you have the option to buy MathType or to continue using it as a stripped version called Equation Editor. (In fact Equation Editor comes as a builtin in module with MS Office package, but you may have to select it at the time of installation. It will not be installed if you choose the installation type as "standard".)

MathType is available in platforms Windows and Mac. They have other products associated with MathType like MathPlayer, TeXaid, etc.

MathType Equation Editor will integrate automatically with mainly the following applications:

    *  Microsoft Office
    * MATLAB
    * Wikipedia
    * Mathematica
    * Gmail
    * Maple
    * Google Docs
    * OpenOffice
    * Mathcad
    * Adobe InDesign

A full list with specifications can be found at the website of Design Science, the makers of MathType.

Installing and using LaTeX is something that needs explanation. Keep on browsing E-Lokam.COM to become a TeXpert!

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