When I require "advanced" stuff like tables and figures you can easily fallback to inline latex commands within you're markdown. It really is a significant improvement over plain latex and I haven't looked back.

Here is a blog post which covers the same approach with examples, templates, etc:

Easy LaTeX with Markdown and Pandoc http://tech.lauritz.me/easy-latex-with-markdown-pandoc/

In theory I could also generate the same presentations in PDF, but I sprinkled some inline HTML where needed, which would have to be converted to inline latex.

Pandoc also has a plugin system which I use to automatically convert inline graphiz graphs to png.

How? This sounds like a very nice middle ground between easy formatting and advanced features.

I then realized that I cannot do much anyway and ended up writing text all the time and compiling one in a while to admire the work.

With Word I keep adding empty lines, reformatting, etc.

But, ultimately my beef is the straw man that markup is bad because it is harder to read. That a graphical editor is superior because it is more readable. Instead, the advantage is that in the one you are only writing text and you are indicating special instructions to the computer. In the other, you only see what the computer is letting you see. Note that in both cases, all of those special instructions are still there. You just can't necessarily see them.

And this might sound like not a big deal. But the first time you find yourself unable to change the bold of one section of text (or centering/whatever), you will really wish you could just drop into a view that showed you why it was doing what it was doing. Which is ultimately just a markup language.

And heaven help you if you decide to upgrade word processor mid paper. Or go back and try to touch up a previous one. Markup wins because it is just plain text. And plain text wins because it is ubiquitous.

In particular, for short papers within a term, the sharing feature of word is decent enough. I confess I prefer text source control, but I know most of my peers in school did not.

   report.latest.2017_0713.new.with_additions.current.adamssversion.ready.lastchange.docx

And if you have 3 people collaborating, sooner or later someone makes edits to something besides HEAD and then there's a giant mess to sort out.

It seems to me that that everything about git is based on text files that are changed by adding and removing lines, but if there is a way to replace that behavior to handle non-textual file formats, I'd be very interesting in learning about it.

Oh, and let's not forget that Word's math renderer is gross.

The relevant quote is "everything is (typically) printed in this weird, old-fashioned-looking typeface called Computer Modern." The "(typically)" implies that there are cases where the result is not in Computer Modern.

On the same topic, "if you want to do anything really wild and crazy – like using a typeface other than Computer Modern – then plain vanilla TeX and LaTeX won’t do. ... And anything other than vanilla TeX and LaTeX is really, really difficult to install. So difficult that most people seem to give up on installing individual packages and instead install the whole of something called TeX Live."

Again, that implies that not all LaTex documents are in Computer Modern.

He mentions XeTeX in the following: "I only needed XeTeX and XeLaTeX, which are quite small. So I tried to install just those. While I did eventually manage it, it took a long time and was very frustrating – and what was most frustrating was that when I looked for help online, the advice I found basically amounted to ‘install TeX Live; everybody else does’.

In school, I was told that you should only put stuff in parentheses that is not strictly required to understand the statement. Without them, we're left with "Everything is printed in [...] Computer Modern". The first word sets the tone in a (IMO) manipulative way.

"A typical megacorporation is just as centralized as a socialist government, and they probably do just as much forecasting and planning, and they apparently succeed (most of the time)."

Leave out the "(most of the time)" and it sounds like typical megacorporations always succeed.

I don't think you were being manipulative there, and I don't think the author of this TeX/LaTex essay is being manipulative now.

Yes, you need to learn to do that, but it's nothing compared to all the boilerplate you need to get a basic LaTeX document working.

I use a similar workflow for PowerPoint slides, where I have dozens of files with a minimal LaTeX template that render math fragments to tiny PDF files, which I can then include in the PowerPoint slides. It's a huge pain. (But less painful than LaTeX beamer).

There are several online tools to do this as well: https://viereck.ch/latex-to-svg/ , www.tlhiv.org/ltxpreview/ , http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php

Word only added support for SVG since 2016. All prior releases were notorious for their absurd lack of vector graphics support.

Conceptually, there's not much to them -- a grid with one item in each grid square. How hard could it be?

Yet somehow, coming up with a system that produces nice-looking tables while using syntax that doesn't make you gouge your eyes out seems to be very difficult.

Then he goes on to show the example of trying to find a spelling error. Ignoring that this just demonstrates his editor support isn't as strong as word's. And completely elides the cascading nightmare that is what happens when Word formatting goes wrong.

Someone else has already pointed out how much superior a text based format is if you want to work with multiple people or track the history of a document.

WYSIWYG editing has, to my mind, one advantage only: it's easier to get started. LaTeX has its disadvantages (such as being a macro language) but being a markup language isn't one of them.

I often proofread for my friends. I tell them that they must use Track Changes in Word. Is there a better tool that you recommend?

And while 'always online' is often a bad thing, it seems to be a lot more reliable than the alternatives of email chains with the attached Word document, appending -R3-edited-complete-final-done.docx to the filename, the manual merges when two people are working on the same thing, or the USB stick that gets passed around.

I think it's doable, but it's a serious project.

I'm assuming that what you're actually asking for is a pretty GUI that pretty-prints diff's output.

And that shows, at best, that if all you do is write papers with the author, date, and only thefirst line, then perhaps Word is better suited for that particular task.

But then, writing real documents is far more demanding than that.

For instance, let's say you're trying to publish your paper in a document, and your paper has more text than a single first paragraph. You find out that the style guide imposed by a journal demands that all your figures are placed at the end, in annex. In LaTeX, all you need to do is add a single line of text (include a package). How much work does Word forces you to do?

And I won't even get started on the fact that MS Word fails to support any vector graphics format.

1) The person has no knowledge of LaTeX 2) They've never seen a markup language before 3) Yet somehow they've received this file, devoid of context, instead of the PDF, and they've opened it up in a text editor. And somehow this is relevant to something they're doing.

Who is this person? What are they doing? How is their experience worse than the guy with no experience of Word, no knowledge of Word who opens up the equivalent Word document in vi?

In general, either your images are too large when compared to the text column length, or you're trying to force text around an image when it doesn't belong there.

Usually, type-setting principles tend to place figures at the top of the page or in dedicated pages, the later due to its cost-cutting advantages. Somehow, people assume that an indeterminate-size figure can be placed anywhere without it affecting the text's readability

"[...], but for now it is enough to observe that people who don’t know how to use a particular tool very well are being told to throw that tool away and learn to use an entirely new one on the grounds that it will enable them to do things that they could have done at least as well with the old one – which is (when you think about it) a little peculiar if the aim is really to help people with their writing, and not (heaven forbid!) simply to evangelise for a community’s preferred way of doing things."

I'm sorry, but this is a bad argument and the worst life advice in the article. It's the same students in school tell all the time, when they question why they should learn math, though they are set to become an artist or editor or anything that seemingly does not involve math. You particularly go to college or university to learn NEW things. Even if they are things you probably won't need in the future and are seemingly obsolete.

While he does have a point that (La)TeX Users fetishize their tool of use, most of his arguments can be used on Word or any WISIWYG tool, too. The example he gives in point 4 is so arbitrarily chosen and his minimal example he thinks is better is just as ambigious and confusing as the LaTeX one. Most comments already mention what the author's real problem: Preference of tool.

However, you're twisting his words a bit. He says that it's not good to learn a new tool if you have an old one which can do the job. Not that you should avoid things for which you need new tools.

I'm all for learning new skills and ideas. However, I hate learning new tools. The ideas in web development are not hard at all. However, there is an idiotic amount of trendy tools and programming languages, and that is something I would object to, because it costs a lot of people a lot of effort.

Math, starting from a certain point, is useless for most people, still it is required to be learnt. Math might be a good tool to measure how good a person can think abstractly, but if it's used for that, then be honest and say so.

I wonder what would change in society if we forced all children to learn an instrument as intensive as we force them to learn math.

- goes on to tell people to use a different tool

I never finished high school. Went on to study a bit of nutrition. I work in my trade (metal fabrication) operating a laser cutter, doing a lot of 2D CAD work. I can rebuilt a car engine or build a house, including all electrical and plumbing and brickwork. I've built boats, sailed, dived, I ski, rock climb, occasionally draw a thing with a pencil. I can bash out a simple tune on a piano. I can pull a decent shot of coffee on a commercial grade espresso machine.

Please tell me which bit of your useless math I didn't do has limited me in anyway I care about?

I think the author's thesis could be summed up as 'I like WYSIWYG more than markup', which is purely a matter of preference. I also know there are several tools which let you do this (to varying degrees of success) with LaTeX as an output. My own preference is having a complete understanding of why everything is where it is in a layout. In my experience WYSIWYG UX has to compromise on its own flexibility and coherence in order to support intuitive and immediate operations around formatting. I have memories of superstitiously pushing bits of padding around when I had to sue word in high school. Editing complex proofs in a WYSIWYG editor seems like an exercise in frustration.

It largely comes down to a ease-of-use vs power and clarity trade-off.

For people who wish to drive computers as opposed to building them, this seems an unreasonable hurdle and makes paid-for alternatives a rational choice. FWIW I agree.

- Interacts well with version control: it is trivial to maintain a LaTeX document in a git repo, and the diffs are readable (especially with --color-words)

- Makes it possible to programmatically generate formatted text, tables, graphs, possibly from external data sources, either with the internal macro language or through an external scripting language

- Has reasonable separation of content and formatting. For example when submitting the same document to multiple conferences it is almost trivial to adapt the content to the required formats.

If writing mostly prose, these may not matter much, but for technical writing I would rather not do without them.

https://www.oxygenxml.com/

http://ditaworks.com/ditaworks-pro-easy-desktop-dita-authori...

http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/

http://easydita.com/

Or for general purpose editing, Word like style, Framemaker

http://www.adobe.com/products/framemaker.html

Last time I used LaTeX for anything serious was in 1999.

If you really want a word processor - I would recommend abiword over Ms word any day - but I still think you're better off in Lyx - but like all(?) Gui programs, it does seem to be easier to mess up your document (which could probably be fixed editing the underlying LaTeX - but if you're already comfortable doing that...).

Classical dtp packages will typically separate up text editing and layout. But then you need an editor to edit your text...

It appears that a license for framemaker costs over $1200 while LaTeX is free.

To command that sort of price, an alternative needs to be far more than a half-decent alternative.

http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/previews/1812/1/

At any rate in the world of Free software, Scribus would probably be the dtp alternative that stands out.

For something in-between, Pagestream might be worth a look.

As for a commercial offering being expensive and only half-decent - that's pretty common for Free software - many Free software packages are incredible value. Things like zfs, postgresql, etc etc.

All my graphs and tables are generated in some programming environment, and updated frequently. In Word, I would have to right-click every single graph, select new source file, adapt graph size... Could Google Docs do this?

I'm with him to the extent that LaTeX evangelism can be oversold - when I'm talking to curious colleagues I tend to stress the vertical learning curve as much as the quality typesetting and convenient cross-referencing - but I do think most of his argument is simply a matter of personal preference.

For me, the fairly stiff default structure imposed by a LaTeX document class makes my writing easier, quite apart from any advantages at the publishing stage.

True, and if you write a lot of documentation or articles that require similar formatting, it's actually not that hard once you understand LaTeX to set up your own class that builds on one of the built in ones to make things look nicer or work in slightly different ways. You can get really nice, consistent documents without doing any extra formatting work.

I would add that once anyone figures out what they want LaTeX to do, they can simply create their custom document class and use it transparently anywhere they want, and share it with the world.

Except for handwriting based solutions like the very cool Nebo app, I really don't think there is a better way to enter formulas, and it can be learnt in a matter of hours.

Writing complete documents in LaTeX is perhaps a bit more verbose, but then he can use some of the methods suggested here, like pandoc.

Spellchecking he can have if he wants, and even WYSIWYG.

It's worth noting also that if you're aiming for a career in math or physics, not learning LaTeX isn't really an option.

EDIT: I referred to the Nebo app as 'MathPad', which is an older incarnation of the same idea, Nebo is MUCH better.

Scribble is well designed to be a more readable Latex with the ability to be beautifully type set.

Example:

#lang scribble/base

@title{On the Cookie-Eating Habits of Mice}

If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk.

Pandoc is a great tool to use if all you need is Math. http://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#math

Are you meaning just having nice looking tables?

If your going more then just nice looking tables I HIGHLY recommend RMarkdown.

http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/lesson-7.html

Using RStudio with RMarkdown makes amazing looking tables with the package Stargazer.

http://www.jakeruss.com/cheatsheets/stargazer/

Different gutters on left and right pages, chapters always starting on a right hand page, consistent and great justification, fine control over how chapter headings appear (and quick to update) etc. etc.

On a side note, is anyone aware of a good way to convert LaTeX (or the produced pdf) into an ePub?

YMMV though with pandoc, not sure how well it handles more fancy latex macros and packages.

The simplest thing to do might be start with a more HTML-based solution (e.g. Markdown with extensions, RST) and then compile that into whatever layout you intend for the physical/pdf form.

[0]: https://github.com/setanta/ebookmaker

Pandoc has the advantage that you can still write LaTeX directly inline when you need to. You can also write in terms of divs and spans (which Pandoc understands natively) and convert these to whatever you want via filters. The latter approach has the advantage that different filters can generate the appropriate code for the format you're generating, so that you don't just lose the elements when you convert to an incompatible format.

Shameless plug: I've built a tool that helps manage the conversion: https://bitbucket.org/elliottslaughter/bookmd

HTML is at a higher level of abstraction, but the HTML/CSS stack supports paged rendering, and browsers tend to support this for print (pre-Blink Opera did for on-screen use, though I don't know if current browsers do.)

But through CSS with a paper media-type, you can specify page-based conditions and actions.

Neither gave me the choice to use LaTeX although I'm sure they might have been open to it had I asked.

Ouch. The number of times I have changed stuff like gutters, margins, chapter headings, caption fonts and layouts would make that an absolute nightmare.

I am really happy how easy all that stuff is in LaTeX. (Of course, other things are a nightmare.)

The big publishers don't give you control over that. They give you a template and you have to stick to it. As an author your first and only job is to provide the content (typically).

Not everyone knows this but MS Word lets you create formatting blocks that essential behave like CSS classes. Most people have used MS Word Heading, Sub Heading, etc not realizing that as long as you never touch the font formatting options the classes can be changed globally just by applying a different template.

The final typesetting of the document is completely up to the publisher. I always assume they simply have a script that pulls out the raw text with formatting indicators and compiles it all together.

Not sure how it works for titles that are really 100 % text, but if any layouting has to be done for images etc. a typical workflow is to import all the files into a DTP/layout application like Adobe InDesign and do the final steps there. InDesign can import the format labels from Word and map them to its own.

> Not everyone knows this but MS Word lets you create formatting blocks that essential behave like CSS classes. Most people have used MS Word Heading, Sub Heading, etc not realizing that as long as you never touch the font formatting options the classes can be changed globally just by applying a different template.

Absolutely, but it's going to be a nightmare when all of my 40 chapters are in a different word doc...

E.g.,

https://techwhirl.com/ms-word-master-documents/

http://peterburk.github.io/programs/#RAMDiskAccelerator

I think you’ll probably agree that the LaTeX version looks better than the word processor export version. Whether it looks sufficiently better to justify the additional effort is a judgement call that you’ll have to make for yourself.

LaTeX is indeed a typesetting tool, in the sense that the user writes content, LaTeX transforms it into typeset content. I'm not sure why the author goes through the same usual criticisms of LaTeX: 1) it's not for everyone; 2) it's good only for researchers; 3) it has a steep learning curve; etc. These have been known and discussed about for years.

The coder analogy (i.e. the type/compile loop) is close to my heart: I use Emacs both for coding+debugging and for writing content with LaTeX. A strong linking point between the two is TikZ-PGF. I'll consider alternatives to LaTeX when somebody comes up with something as powerful as TikZ-PGF.

I concur on this. In my phd thesis, I defined macros for all frequently used mathematical terms and expressions. This way, many places got almost as readable as the rendered formula.

For example, "\tfuzzy(1,2,3)", denoting a triangular fuzzy number with min. support 1, modal value 2 and max. support 3, is pretty clear after using it once or twice. We can then decide later how exactly to render it by changing the macro definition.

Similarly, when citing a lot of names (just using the names here, not actually paper references) wich characters which are not in my commonly used alphabet, I frequently define macros for them too. Then I can use e.g. "\Mares" in the text instead of "Mare{\v{s}}". Much easier, also when compared to hunting those special chars in a character map in a WYSIWYG word processor, or copy-pasting all the time.

However, I find this use of macros really only really pays off when working on larger documents, or living documents that keep changing, like CVs. For shorter and short-lived docs, I'd use Latex only if they have at least some math or special layouting requirements. I tried using Word's formula editor, but even though one can sort of get used to it, I find Latex much easier to use, especially with amstex. But for shorter documents without math, I find a word processor just much more convenient.

In Microsoft Word for Windows it's the "Styles" bar, and on MacOS it's the "Styles Pane".

It would be interesting to see a word processor that enforced style usage...

And sure, it takes some discipline to use styles, but that goes for any other option as well (apart from things like Docbook maybe). You're supposed to use \em in LaTeX instead of \textit for the same reasons you're supposed to use an Emphasis style in Word instead of italic text. The only difference is that the mechanism is the same in LaTeX (type a few characters – which is pretty much why for any given macro you'd be hard-pressed to actually decide whether it's semantic or presentational), while in Word it's a separate feature.

I'd also be surprised if word's implementation was anywhere near as powerful as a full-on search replace on latex using regexps.

First, LaTeX was intended for physical publication, so there's no native notion of text reflow or "responsiveness". Worse, everyone distributes their documents as PDFs, which are a PITA to read on a smaller device or ereader. At best, an author could utilize something like pandoc to distribute an HTML version, but alas, publishers never give a damn.

Second, I have been spoiled into expecting that I can modify the way a document looks to my liking, not yours. I can't invert the colors at night. I can't change the font size, line height, or margins--and my God do people use some huge margins with LaTeX.

Then comes the math syntax... Yes it's very powerful, but its a noisy mess to read and write. I really wish we had a simpler syntax akin to ASCIIMath[0].

LaTeX: (\left(\frac{1}{2}\right))

ASCIIMath: (1/2)

[0]: http://asciimath.org/

For anything other than simple linear text, I've found PDFs easier to work with than alternatives, even using letter/A4 PDFs on a smartphone.

For instance, if you use zathura and mupdf to read PDFs, with a single keystroke you invert the text for reading at night. I do it all the time, and it works great. Whether that PDF was generated with LaTeX or not has nothing to do with it.

A LaTeX Document will always behave the same whatever its size and content. Whereas word processors may unexpectedly change formatting without anyone noticing, for example in the case where you share a file with someone and this person update the text and sends it back. The text written might not belong to the same formatting family as the rest of the text but shares the same appearance and this change will go unnoticed until the original owner changes the appearance of the formatting family.

Not to mention versionning. Having your thesis in Latex in a git repo will consistently work. Whereas you will struggle sharing a single .docx file across multiple system or even different word versions. And you lose any possibility to roll back, inspect the history or show diffs.

If readability of LaTeX bothers you so much, use reST. Best of both worlds, really. I only roll up my sleeves with LaTeX when I need precise control over appearance, like writing a CV or a board game manual.

  * Markdown has many flavors, reST is standarized
  * reST is extensible
  * reST is semantic, Markdown is just text.

reST is marginally harder than markdowns, so is it really worth sticking with MD ?

I mean look at the title on the screenshot rendered by Writer! It's horrific! I've found things improve when you move to a 15" 4k screen, but on my 1080p desktop monitors at work Writer is barely readable. You seem to be in luck you're using a Mac, since it's even worse on Linux in my experience.

> I know where it is because I put it there, but looking for it is hurting my eyes.

Perchance the fault is with your text editor. It hurts my eyes, too, but the problem disappears when I use my local editor.

It has worked amazing well. For a few reasons:

1. We easily can typeset all our documents the same and if we do something like change the letterhead we can easily update them all.

2. Auto-generating documents (forms letters) is a snap.

3. Everything is source controlled.

3a. If a client needs customizations we can give them their own branch and easily diff the branch with master. Very useful for documents that have legal side effects.

A few years ago, my brothers were simultaneously writng their Masters theses (in civil engineering, where LaTeX is not exactly common).

One of them decided to plunge into LaTeX. It took him a week or so to get productive, but once everything was set up, it "just worked" and he could focus on his thesis.

The other one decided to stick to the conventional choice, Microsoft Word. He started writing immediately because Word is what he's familiar with, but when the deadline neared, he descended into near-madness as he fought Word's hobby of breaking the entire layout whenever a new character is inserted.

In the end, you're always going to have to invest some amount of time for the typesetting of a thesis or paper. But LaTeX has the advantage of letting you plan when to pay that cost. (Up to a certain point, of course. The final layout is "final" for a reason.)

Secondly, LaTeX handles figures 10000x better than Word, in that you just let it figure out placement inline. Captions are as simple as possible. Meanwhile, have you ever had that Word document with 10 figures in which you move one inline image, and every figure jumps to a different page, leading to spam clicking Ctrl+z? Or how about adding figure captions? Inline you have to use the caption tool, which isn't fantastic and often creates a text box that isn't strictly tied to the figure. The method I found best was just to have another document simply for figures and write the captions in regular text. This both looks bad, and during the editing process, requires you to switch between files to keep track of the figures that are being referenced in the text. Additionally, automatic figure numbering depends on where the figure anchor is, often leading to improper numbering. Again, referencing figures by number in Word is a nightmare that LaTeX handles amazingly.

Third, I agree, setting up LaTeX on a machine isn't fun, and I have always been bad at it. However, I don't do it anymore. ShareLaTeX has solved all of those problems for me. All packages are available, you don't have the funny "compile three times to get reference numbering correct", it's amazing at collaboration with both git-like diffs as well as Word-like track changes/commenting system, and has tons of templates so the pain of setting up your document's preamble is done for you.

One tip I have is if someone you work with doesn't know LaTeX and can't be convinced to learn it, still write in LaTeX, compile to pdf, and use Acrobat to convert to Word. That works surprisingly well. The Lyx version conversion does not work nearly as well. I can't say I've tried pandoc though, I would like to try that next.

https://jabranham.com/blog/2016/11/using-pandoc-export-to-wo...

[1]: http://www.texstudio.org [2]: https://i1.wp.com/gauravtiwari.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/0...

We can agree that everything that needs to be pinched and squeezed can be pinched and squeezed with Latex. So, creating stylish modern looking tables, full page width graphics overlayed with expensive commercial fonts, custom vector graphics and diagrams, is feasible. You would never even recognize it was done with latex. This makes sense at corporate scale painting reports, white papers, invoices, in company colors, logos, and styles. Churning hundreds of styled docs. That's the use case I see for Latex, but no one goes around showing these off, I assume because making styles like this is a job, and the styles themselves assets.

The font installation and selection is something I wish to have a GUI interface as simple as a word drop-down. Maybe I should find/or make such simple tool (ideally it should load the .tex file and provide WYSIWYG interface).

The edit-compile-debug cycle is the simple way of dealing with complexity. The text form (markup or code) decomposes the complexity into abstract parts that we can focus on one part a time and the feedback loop provides a progressive path to perfection. I believe at some point, programming skill should be as common just as literacy today, at which point this edit-compile-debug cycle will be accepted just as we learn to accept a book without pictures.

But I recognize that some readers prefer the fully justified version. This suggests that the real problem is designing for a fixed page layout. It would be better to publish in something like EPUB, where you can display it however you like. Everybody I know who reads scientific papers reads mostly on screens now, and I think this is common. The printed paper version is more for archival than actual reading, so it doesn't make sense to prioritize paper based typography.

  \usepackage[document]{ragged2e}

I used it for my undergrad dissertation. It was great.

I used it for my PhD thesis. It was great.

In between the two, I used it for a research paper. I ended up bringing a couple of extra coauthors onto the paper. They weren't familiar with LaTeX. Guess who ended up doing their editing for them?

I stick to Word these days for anything there's a chance I will have to collaborate on with others. Awkwardness working with people who can't use LaTeX is a risk I'm not going to take. Plus, Word (and associated referencing tools like Zotero) have come on a lot since I first used LaTeX 16 years ago.

300 pages in Word, this was really painful to read. It was pure text, with a few quotes. My first thought was it would have been so much easier in LaTeX - both for the author and the readers.

I wrote my thesis in LaTeX and convinced my wife to write hers in LaTeX as well (~1998). This was not because LaTeX is "better" but the fact that it is plain text, so always useable a way or another, not so with Word

One might claim it's just catering to the dominant delusional cultist hierarchy... but it sure makes the math a hell of a lot more readable.

https://www.overleaf.com

what's the problem with this ? just encode as UTF-8 and type however you like.

It's a good thing it finally got to understand Unicode. It was a pain previously

Both fit neatly into the same codepage, latin-1, so no possible conflicts there

> I place \selectlanguage{UKenglish} and \selectlanguage{ngerman} in front of the appropriate paragraphs

What about mixing two languages within the same paragraph? \selectlanguage before and after each word?

We also tried to use latex to generate price reports, and that's where we ran into Russian + Turkish issue :)

For simple documents like the one at the link, I'd go with Word/Pages. For generating pdfs though... I still have no idea :)

Appending "(2016)" to the title would not detract from the article. But, as far as I could tell, none of the assertions in the article have changed in the past year since the post was published. LaTeX and WYSIWYG editing haven't undergone fundamental changes on that short of a time frame. So the article's modest age doesn't really imply anything about its relevance.