Microsoft vs Latex comparasion

If you’ve ever had to write a text document, whether for academic or professional reasons, you’ve probably heard of Microsoft Word. It has been and still is the preferred tool for such tasks. However, it’s not the only tool available on the market. Another tool that can be used for the same tasks is LaTeX, and that’s what we’ll be talking about in this video.

What is Microsoft Word

First, Microsoft Word is a word processor developed by Microsoft, which is part of the Microsoft Office suite of productivity applications. It was initially released in 1983 for the DOS operating system, thus marking the beginning of a tool that would revolutionize the way text is created and edited on personal computers.

The initial goals of Microsoft Word were to provide users with a more intuitive and efficient way to create text documents compared to the word processors available at that time. With a user-friendly interface and advanced features such as the ability to format text, insert images and graphics, and perform spelling and grammar corrections, Microsoft Word quickly became the preferred choice for creating professional and personal documents.

What is LaTeX

On the other hand, LaTeX is a high-quality text composition system built on TeX, a typesetting system developed by Donald Knuth. TeX was created by Knuth due to his dissatisfaction with the typographic quality of documents produced by the systems available at that time. The main motivation behind TeX was to develop a system that would allow authors to produce documents with exceptional typographic quality, especially in the academic and scientific fields, where the presentation of mathematical formulas and technical texts was crucial.

LaTeX, on the other hand, is a collection of high-level macros and commands built on top of TeX. It was developed by Leslie Lamport in the 1980s to provide users with an easier way to use TeX, abstracting low-level details and allowing authors to focus on the content of their documents rather than worrying about formatting and layout. LaTeX simplifies the creation of structured and complex documents, such as theses, academic articles, and books, by providing a set of tools and predefined templates.

WYSIWYG & WISIWYM

Instead of comparing MS Word directly with LaTeX, it’s better to take a more general context by comparing WYSIWYG editors like Word to WYSIWYM editors like LaTeX.

WYSIWYG, standing for “What You See Is What You Get,” are software tools that display content on screen as it will appear in its final printed form. They allow users to edit documents visually, making real-time changes to formatting, layout, and content.

WYSIWYM, on the other hand, stands for “What You See Is What You Mean.” These are software tools that focus on the structure and meaning of content rather than its visual appearance. Unlike WYSIWYG editors, where formatting is applied directly to the text, in WYSIWYM editors, users provide information about the structure and meaning of the content using specific syntax that can vary depending on the context.

For example, to make text bold in a WYSIWYG editor, you would highlight the text and apply the bold formatting with a button, with the text becoming bold in real-time. With a WYSIWYM editor, however, you might have to enclose the text in asterisks to indicate to the program that you want that part of the text to be marked as bold.

Adventages

To compare one with the other and see which is better for a task or in general, we will compare them based on different topics.

cost

Starting with the cost of each one. I consider that cost is not a definitive measure to determine the quality of each type of software, but it can be relevant for some users.

Usually, WYSIWYG editors like Word, Only Office, or others, tend to have a higher cost. This is because they offer an intuitive visual interface, which requires a greater investment in software development and maintenance. On the other hand, WYSIWYM Editors like LaTeX are usually free and open-source, maintained by the community. This is because by focusing mainly on the document syntax, they can afford not to depend on a user interface, simplifying development and maintenance time.

Currently, Microsoft Word costs about $6 per month included in the basic package of Microsoft Office 365, while LaTeX has an approximate cost of $0.00.

Therefore, LaTeX unquestionably wins this point.

Ease of use

When it comes to ease of use, the ease of use in Editors like Word is what has propelled their success. They are quite intuitive, allowing users to complete entire documents without the need to have studied them beforehand. They are simple and straightforward, enabling people who do not need a complex tool to edit their documents to save time learning another tool. This facilitates access for people who only have basic computer skills.

With LaTeX and WYSIWYM editors, it’s different, as you have to learn their syntax and framework from the outset to start working with them, creating friction for new users to adopt these tools.

Furthermore, editors like Word often add extra features for users such as autocorrect or artificial intelligence to further facilitate their use.

Consequently, this point goes to Microsoft Word.

collaboration and adoption

Now let’s talk about which of the two has the advantage in terms of collaboration among users and the adoption it has had among the public.

When it comes to collaboration, many may think that Microsoft Word and WYSIWYG editors are the winners here because they often add features like cloud saving and allow multiple users to edit the same document simultaneously. However, I disagree with this.

While LaTeX and WYSIWYM editors may not regularly offer these collaboration features by default, due to their great flexibility (which we’ll discuss later), we can achieve the same features and even more if desired.

Nothing prevents you from uploading your LaTeX documents to Google Drive and having others edit them from there. Or depending on the editor you’re using, you can edit the files simultaneously in real-time, for example, by installing a plugin in VSCode.

If I had to give this point based solely on the ability for collaboration, I would give it to LaTeX. But if we introduce the adoption of both, this is where the problem lies with LaTeX.

If you were to ask in your work or academic environment about LaTeX, probably few or none would respond. And that’s because the use of LaTeX is not as widespread as MS Word. So if you wanted to work on a document collaboratively, it’s more likely that Word would be used instead of LaTeX.

So, a point for Word.

flexibility

Now, let’s consider the flexibility between these two. With MS Word, if you want to create or edit a document, you’ll need to have the MS Word application installed or use the online version. You’ll probably have only one ‘.docx’ file containing all the work, and the workflow will be the same between one user and another. When working, MS Word doesn’t offer you great flexibility on how you want to edit your documents. The advantage of this is that working with different documents remains quite consistent, but it also brings some disadvantages.

With LaTeX or regularly any WYSIWYM editor, it’s not like that. How the user wants to divide or work with the document is up to them. LaTeX only defines the syntax that will be used and the compiler to transform your LaTeX files to PDF. Then, if you want to split your document into several files for each participant in the work and have them come together at compile time, it’s possible; if you want certain parts of the text to have a predetermined format, you can create a function for that part, it’s possible; if you want the entire document to be generated from other files automatically, it’s possible.

Some will argue that all of this is possible in MS Word with a few macros in VBA, and I encourage you to try it and let me know if you’re still alive.

Although it’s true that MS Word has an integrated programming language, the truth is that it wasn’t intended for widespread use. Besides, the format in which Microsoft Word saves its files isn’t documented or simply isn’t plain text, making it much harder to use other external tools to generate parts of the document.

With LaTeX, you can split your document into different files to adapt it to your needs. You can generate those files automatically with other tools to automate them or simply program functions within LaTeX to improve productivity through reusability. This makes working with repetitive or extensive documents much more efficient with LaTeX than with MS Word.

scalability

Probably you have never worked in documents so large that they slow down the entire program, but let me tell you that this is indeed a real problem. MS Word saves everything in a single file: images, text, styles, and even your VBA macros. This makes your files increasingly heavier and makes it more difficult for the Word program to work with them. This is a scalability problem; your work is so large that it becomes unfeasible to work with. Due to Word’s lack of flexibility, there’s not much that can be done about it.

That’s why we should be thankful that LaTeX or WYSIWYM exist. Here, scalability is practically infinite.

The size of a file before it becomes unfeasible to work with is defined by the editor you’re using. But if that moment arrives, you can simply split the document into multiple files. If the complete compilation of the document takes too long for viewing, you can always create smaller compilations divided into parts, and when you’re ready to finish the work, compile the entire project.

To give you an idea, some users report experiencing problems with Word starting from 1000 pages with a decent computer. Others reach the point of experiencing performance issues with just 200 pages or even fewer. This will largely depend on the complexity of the document and the power of your computer. What can be said with certainty, though, is that Word’s scalability limit is much lower than LaTeX’s.

Point for LaTeX.

Document’s complexity

Alright, so far you’ve been able to handle all your documents perfectly with MS Word. But what if we add a little more difficulty? What if now you have to number the pages depending on the section? Or you need to establish an unconventional layout, like switching from 1 column to 2 and vice versa subsequently? What if you want to add mathematical formulas and equations to your documents?

Here, the simplicity of Word becomes complexity in managing these types of situations, and LaTeX becomes your best friend. The level of customization in LaTeX reaches the point where you can manage the position of each character on a line. How separated is it? Or how high or low is it located? Additionally, you can create functions to automate all that and avoid repeating yourself over and over again.

It’s also worth mentioning that LaTeX formulas and equations have become a standard in the scientific community. Therefore, you will always have the best representation, and you probably won’t miss anything when representing mathematical equations.

That’s why practically all theses and research articles are made with LaTeX. Some professors even require it for submitting the final work.

At this point, there’s nothing to argue about. Although Microsoft Word also has equations and mechanisms for more flexible layouts, these tools seem like toys compared to LaTeX.

Typography disposition and Layout algorithms

When I talk about layout algorithms, I’m referring to the calculations done to determine if a word should stay on the current line or move to the next due to lack of space, how much space to leave between words to maintain justified text, where to hyphenate a word if it’s too long, how much space to leave for continuing onto a new page, and so on.

These types of algorithms in MS Word are very simplified and far from perfect, but there’s a reason for that. The general problem in Word or any WYSIWYG editor is that document rendering has to be done in real-time, and there isn’t much time available to calculate all these details. Therefore, even though compiling LaTeX may take much longer, even seconds, the result is 1000 times better because without a time limitation for calculating layout algorithms, LaTeX can afford to implement much more complex and advanced algorithms. That’s one of the reasons why documents look and feel so good.

Also, when we talk about typographic disposition, i.e., where the letters are to be placed, Word has practically no support for this. However, LaTeX is a powerhouse. It can configure the spacing of each individual character, its height, the distances between words, between paragraphs, after periods, etc. Text manipulation in LaTeX is very versatile. It may increase the difficulty of editing, but this point undoubtedly belongs to LaTeX.

Veredict

To conclude, I don’t believe there’s a definitive winner between the two; rather, it depends on the individual and the occasion.

If you’re someone who doesn’t need to create or edit documents very often, or you don’t require a high level of complexity in your documents and want to avoid the need to learn something more complex, then simply go for Word, as it would be the most ideal for you.

On the other hand, if you constantly create or edit repetitive documents, need complex formatting, or want the quality of your documents to be top-notch, then it would be beneficial for you to learn how to use LaTeX.

However, using Word doesn’t make you a worse person or less competent… unless you’re one of those who demonically presses Enter repeatedly to get to the next page and then complains about why the images are dancing around the document… cough cough, just kidding, although it’s advisable to dedicate some time to learn how to use Word’s formatting features.

Anyway, personally, I think LaTeX is starting to show its age, and we should give a chance to its closest successor, Typst, but we’ll talk about that later.

With this analysis, I believe we’ve covered enough, and I bid farewell until the next blog.