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What TeX Gets Right

2024 July 17 Last week I wrote about how LaTeX might evolve to stay relevant to 21st-century technical writing. But technology has come a long way since the 1970’s.

First things first: I'll happily admit that there are plenty of circumstances where TeX is not the best solution, and you'll be better off using some other kind of technology — whether that's Markdown, Microsoft Word, pen and paper, or whatever else. My claim is that the real challenge of typesetting mathematics is that written math is an open-ended, generative visual language, admitting infinitely varied forms in unique, unpredictable, recursive combinations. I'll assert, but can't possibly prove, that once you stop accepting the limitations that less powerful tools impose on you, you’ll start seeing opportunities to use TeX's capabilities everywhere.

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