[dejaime]

Not only that. How many times has my one machine, with one single version of ms word installed, broken the formatting of my hundreds of pages document...

In the point where you learn how to create all the custom formats needed, and then you make sure to always mark all paragraphs/words/stuff you need to be in such custom formats without any indication other than the dropdown on the top (what is really hard and awkward) and then all you do is going into every single one of the custom formats to fake-edit them and reapply... that's hours wasted... possibly multiple times every week...

Latex is hard, and a piece of crap, but after the learning curve you don't have that kind of problem. The tech doesn't generates rework all by itself just because you went to bed and turned off the computer.

Do I think Latex is good? No; but it's definitely a better solution than word processors for this type of work. It is a bad solution to a hard problem. While word processors is a trivial solution to the same hard problem, one that doesn't really solve it in the end.

Honestly though, I'd love to see something more like Markdown in use here, but no flavor I know currently cuts it. Or maybe a word processor that -actually- supported paper|article|thesis|book|w/e templates and complex constructs...