Speaker 1: Hi everyone, in this video I just want to give you 10 reasons why you should start using LaTeX right now to write scientific paper, documents, thesis or even to generate presentations. My name is Federico Tartarini and I'm a postdoctoral researcher and I've been using LaTeX for the last four years. Before I was using like a commercial software, for example I was using Microsoft Word, I used it to write my PhD thesis but then I realized that I needed a much more powerful tool which I could use to write scientific paper and books or to simply generate my curriculum video. So I started using LaTeX four years ago and I really loved it, so I want to share 10 reasons with you why you should also consider using it. Reason number one, quality and aesthetic. With LaTeX you can generate very beautiful documents with very little effort. LaTeX compiles all the code that you write, so you just write some code, you focus on the content of the document and then LaTeX gets all your code, compiles it, determines where to optimally place figures, text, headers and so forth and generate a very beautiful document for you. I just want to show you a couple of examples. These are two curriculum videos that I've generated with LaTeX and as you can see the quality of the document is very beautiful and it's very pleasing to the eye and it's very simple to generate it. You just get a template from the internet and focus on the content and honestly if you would like to do something similar with any other commercial software it would be very difficult but with LaTeX it's super simple and you are not limited to write curriculum video. As I mentioned before you can use LaTeX to generate a scientific manuscript. Here I got a template from Elsevier and I have a video about this. So you just download the template and you can get started in no time, in one minute you can get started and you have this beautiful template and then you can switch the style, you can have a single column, review, double column. Honestly it's just with a few click of the mouse you generate a very nice document with very little effort. The same to do the same with any other commercial software will take you hours and then you will have compatibility issues and so forth. So honestly point number one is quality and aesthetic. The document that you get out of LaTeX they look like professional document and they are fairly simple to get started. If you want to see how to get started with the Elsevier template just check my other video here on YouTube in which I'm going through how to get started with this template. Point number two is free and open source. This again should be a reason by itself why you should start using it because it's free. I mean there is not much to add but if you change the operating system, if you don't have the money to pay for any software you can use it for free and the file can be opened across different devices. So it works with Mac, it works with Windows, it works with Linux, you can even open the file on an iPad or a tablet or on a phone and it's open source. And the fact that it's open source is a great advantage because we will see later on that the community has developed several packages that you can use for free. And these packages help you writing math equations, help you with the figures, referencing equation figures and tables with the citation, acronyms and glossary. So again there is not much to add to the free but it's not just simply free. So for instance even Google Docs is free but then eventually it's a very limited tool. It's very difficult to organize citation, bibliography, to properly reference figures. LaTeX is super powerful and free. Point number three, you just have to focus on the content. As I previously mentioned before, in Word most of the time that you spend is not actually or any other commercial software is not actually changing the content of the document but formatting the document. And this is why LaTeX was invented because you have to shift from wasting time from changing the structure of the document because it's not looking as you want to focusing on what you need to write. So if you are a researcher, if you just want to write a letter, if you want to create a presentation you should be focusing on the content inside these documents not on how the document look like. So LaTeX will take care of how the document will look like. It's a typesetting script so we'll take care of that. You just have to take care of the content but just let me show you an example. So for instance here on the right side we can see an example of the previous paper that I showed you, one section, the results. As you can see the faculty is divided in two columns, the line numbering, the indentation, all these kind of things you don't have to take care about, you don't have to care about because these are going to be defined in the template which you can find a template for everything. For all the publisher they have their own template for different type of papers and books you can find templates, you can find templates for presentation. So you just get whatever you like and then you focus on the content. So here as you can see it's just a simple plain text, okay? The LaTeX files are just text and are ending in a dot text file, T-E-X, and can be opened with any text editor. So this is what you have inside. So this is the code that you write and it looks a little bit, I mean a little bit more difficult than Word or any other commercial software, but as you can see it's not so difficult and I have a video on how to get started. So you just have to define the section and then you write the text that you want to appear inside your paper and that's it, LaTeX will take care of all the rest. No compatibilities issue. As I said the LaTeX files are just text files which can be opened with any text editor. This is a great advantage because you don't have a problem if a new version of any commercial software gets released, you're not going to have a new, then you're not entirely sure whether you can open your old documents. This is not a problem with LaTeX. If someone else is not using Word but is using Google Doc, you definitely have issues and then converting the file back and forth. Here is just a simple plain text. Anyone can open it on any operative system, so there is never going to be a compatibility issue. The file cannot break itself because it's just plain text and you can easily compartmentalize the file. So let's say you're writing a long thesis and you have different sections or different chapters or you're writing a paper, you have different sections of the paper. With Word or with Google Docs it's very difficult to write a different section in different documents because then eventually all the citations will break down. Here is not the same, here is super simple. You just divide the text file into sub files and again I have a video about that, I will not go into detail about that in this video, I just want to give you the reason why you should start using LaTeX and then I have other videos on how to get started with LaTeX. So you can divide the paper in different sections and if you want that your supervisor or someone else reviews one part of the paper while you're working on another paper, that's super simple. You just send that file, he's going to review that file and then you can merge it back to your document. You can also, since it's just a text file, you can also leverage version control such as Git, which is extremely powerful. So with any other commercial software it's true you have track changes, but those are quite limited because once you have accepted the changes then it's very difficult to go back in history and to get back the file to a previous state. With Git, which you don't have to use it, but I have a video about that as well and please find the link down in the description, you can simply track the changes of your code step by step and then it's very simple to go back and check what you wrote a month ago, a week ago or a day ago and see who changed the file. So it's super simple to check who modified the file and to share the file with other people because you can use services such as GitHub or GitLab. You can send the file online to a private or a public repository and other people can also change the code either using their web browser, so from their phone, from their laptop or they can change their code from their computer and send you back the changes. So everything stays synced across all the people who are writing the documents. This is a great feature, but you don't have to use it if you don't want to, if you're not familiar with Git. Packages. So I said before that LaTeX is open source and I already kind of mentioned one of the advantages of being open source is because people from all over the world have written hundreds of packages and these packages can help you with a lot of different things. It can help you managing bibliography and I have a video about that. I have a video also about how you can manage glossaries, which is an extremely powerful feature in my opinion. That's the reason why I actually moved from Word or any other commercial software to LaTeX because the glossary functionality is honestly fantastic and there is a video in the description down below. You can find a link to my video and you can even create presentations. So let me just show you very quickly. So here you can see how the references in the top left image, you can see how the references are automatically compiled and organized for you. Of course, you can change the style and everything. Tables. Tables, again, you focus on the content of the table and LaTeX is going to generate a high quality with a very beautiful aesthetic simply for you. Nomenclature. I was just mentioning before glossaries, nomenclature, acronyms, extremely powerful feature, which I will not go into detail, but this is one of the advantages of start using LaTeX, which honestly with any other software out there is a nightmare, but because you have to spell out that specific word when it was first mentioned in the paper or in the document, but then it's very hard to keep track where and all the location that was mentioned, it was referenced. In this case, it's going to be super simple with this package. And this is just an example of the Beamer template from DTU that I've downloaded. But again, just if you Google online and you look for any other type of presentation template, you can find for sure there are hundreds or thousands of templates that you can choose and pick whichever you like. Math equation. Math is also kind of a package by itself, but I just wanted to talk about it because I think this is also one of the reasons why a lot of people just move to start and start using LaTeX for writing equations. It's honestly fantastic. And I'm sure if you've written a document with any other software, writing equation is always a pain because then the structure of the document sometimes collapses or you have bugs and it doesn't format very well. But LaTeX in writing math equation is where it honestly really excels. And the equation, how you write the equation is slightly different, but there is a lot of tutorials out there. There are even very nice software which you can take a screenshot of one equation and then it gets converted into a LaTeX equation. So for instance, you can take a snapshot of this equation and this software called MathPick is going to convert this equation for you into this format here. And yes, it's going to take a little bit of time to write the equation, but once you understand how to write the equation, and these are even simple equations, but you can write very complex equations. And the thing is, as I mentioned before, because LaTeX compiles the document for you, every time the equation will always be looking the same and will always have the same format. You can easily reference equations, number equations and so forth. Extremely powerful feature. Seven, we have already covered the templates, but this is one of the 10 main reasons why you should start using LaTeX, because there are thousands of templates. You want to write a journal paper, you are covered. You want to prepare a presentation, a scientific presentation, a simple presentation, you are covered. Books, business card, the curriculum vitae, any type of document, a poster, whatever you want to do. You focus on the content, you find a template from online. If you are a beginner, or you can create even your own template, no one is stopping you, it's open source code, so you can even write your own template. And then you generate the output. Super simple, always reliable, and no other problems. Longevity and stability. So I kind of already covered this point already, but what do I mean with longevity and stability? So let's say that you are using Google Docs. Is it going to be there in 10 years? Is it going to be compatible with the version of the document that you wrote today? If you wrote a Word document 10 years ago, is it going to be compatible today with the new version of Word? Or you will have to spend a lot of time fixing all the annoying issues because the formatting has changed? Or if you change computer, you are a Mac user and you start using Windows, or the opposite. If you are a Windows user and you start using Mac, you change job. Are you sure that you are going to be able to compile the document that you wrote 10 years ago? Or in 10 years, are you sure that you are going to be able to compile the same document, generate the same document as it looked today? The answer is yes, with LaTeX. So with LaTeX, it's just a text file, LaTeX has been around for decades, and they are releasing updates, but very, very slowly, because it already has all the functionalities that you need. So you can rest assured that in 10 years, you are going to be able to generate the same document that you generated today, and the file is not going to be corrupted. Word file, while you sync it with different devices or different online cloud services, they might get corrupted. This is not the case with LaTeX. And also they are extremely lightweight, because it's just a text file. So the compiler, you have to install it on your computer, you can use an online service, but the file itself is super light, because it's just a text document. Community support. So it's open source, one thing, but also there is a lot of community support out there. You can find a lot of videos online, as this one, or I've released other videos, just check the link down in the description, or this is just a link to some of the tutorials and wikis that you can find online. So on Wikipedia, on TextStackExchange, you can find a lot of answers that the community, people ask questions, and people give answers and solve the problems, you can find information over there. And I would like to spend a second talking about Overleaf. So this video is not sponsored by Overleaf, but I think it's a fantastic tool, especially for the beginners, or for when you want to share your manuscript with other people, which are not familiar with LaTeX. I have a video about Overleaf, how to get started, how to sync it with GitHub, and so forth. But basically, it works in your browser, so with any computer, even with your smartphone, you can open a document, it compiles the document for you, and it has a lot of templates. So you want to write an article, you get the template, you focus on the content, and you generate the paper. You can get started with a LaTeX document in no time, honestly, it only takes one minute. While if you have to install it on your computer, it takes a little bit more time, because you have to install the compiler, a couple of software, so that could be a little bit daunting for some people. Get started with Overleaf, learn how to use LaTeX, and then start using it on your computer. Because ultimately, if you compile the document on your computer, you have more flexibility, it's easier to update tables, figures, and so forth, but Overleaf is a great tool that I would really encourage you to have a look at it, and start if you are a beginner with Overleaf. Time investment. Well, many people would think that this is a negative thing, it's not a positive thing of using LaTeX. Well, in fact, it is, because we have already covered before that, yes, LaTeX, it has a bit of a steep learning curve, which honestly is much better these days, because you can use software like Overleaf. But this is a time investment, it's not time wasted, and that's what I want to mean. If you have a Word document, you write the Word document, you get started in no time, or Google Docs, you get started in no time, then down the track, you decide to publish with another journal, so you have to change the format, or there is something that is keep breaking, that's time wasted. So you are wasting time to change the structure of the paper, not the content of the paper. With LaTeX, it takes a little bit of time to learn how to do things. Once you have learned, you have learned a new skill, which is also very good for you, because you can also put it on your CV, and this is something new that you have learned. So you haven't wasted time, and the waste of the time is always going to be there. Every time you write a paper, every time you are going to be wasting the same amount of time doing the same activities, because you have to change the formatting. With LaTeX, you invest time one time, you learn how to use it, and then you are sorted. You have a new skill, and you are not going to see the same issue that you saw before with any other software, because LaTeX is plain and simple. You write the code and the text, it compiles the document for you, and you get the output. Now that I covered the 10 reasons why you should start using LaTeX, I just want to tell you the downside, but I also want to tell you how you can fix these downsides. So, first, steep learning curve, but we have already seen that we can use Overleaf, and this is one solution to the steep learning curve. Customizing a template could be difficult, it's true, especially for a beginner, if you want to change the template, it could be a little bit difficult, and you might not be familiar with the LaTeX commands, but, again, you should focus on the content. You want to publish, you decide to publish with one journal, which has a template, you decide to publish with another journal, in Word, or in Google Docs, you will have to change the document manually. In LaTeX, you download the new template, you copy and paste the content of the document, which doesn't change, that's just the template, you copy and paste the content of the document into the new template, and then you are done. So, at the beginning, I would tell you, I would suggest you not to try to customize your own template, just get a template that is out there for free, and start using it. The document is compiled, so what does it mean the document is compiled? When you're typing in Word, the document appears on your screen, how it's going to be looking when it's printed. With LaTeX, as I showed you before, you type the text and the code, then you have to press compile, or run the compiler on your computer, and this is going to generate a PDF. At the beginning, again, seems to be a negative thing, this thing, because every time you have to compile a document, but this is a very positive thing, because with Word, if you want to do something, and you get stuck because that software, or with Google Docs, if it doesn't allow you to write over there, then you get stuck. Here, you don't have to care. You write the content, and this is going to generate the PDF, and the output file. And this is the final downside, which it only outputs PDF. So, some people find it as a problem, but I think it's actually a positive thing, because you should never share, anyway, with any other person, like, for instance, with your client, or the publisher, your original Word document, because they can accidentally change it, and change the document. You should always send a PDF. PDFs are now, can be opened on any type of device, so I don't think this is actually a problem, but this is actually something that should always be done, but I just wanted to make you aware that with LaTeX, you can only generate PDF. You can convert a LaTeX document to another extension, to a Google Doc, to Markdown, or to Google Word, but then you will lose all the power of LaTeX itself, because how you organize equation, references, and so forth, all those things get lost. I really hope you like this video, and I really hope you will consider start using LaTeX. Start with a simple project, and see how it goes, and if you like this video, please consider liking it, and subscribing to my channel. If you have any question, leave a comment, a question down in the section below. Thank you very much for listening.