---
layout: post
title: LaTeX - the word processor for engineers (and smart people too)
tags: [ design, development ]
published: true
---

When i met [Nuno Job](http://nunojob.wordpress.com), we had a great
time talking about technology and its future. He told me about
[LaTeX](http://latex-project.org), a logical structure word processor.
It allows people to write documents, books, reports, articles, you name it,
through proper source code. This means a lot of things to me:

* The code stays organized, which means the result document stays organized.
* No templates; or in other words, one single template.
* Want to pass the document through the network? Just a few KB instead of
  almost 1MB...!

Despite the LaTeX distribution being larger than a CD (at least for Mac OS, the
Windows version is slightly smaller), it's worth it, especially if you're in a
team in which everyone has to write a piece of a written delivery. I remember I
had to spend almost two hours to format every piece into one big furball.
Sounds kind of messy, huh?  Try gathering up a team, each one writes a piece of
the document at their own way and then try using LaTeX. Your conclusions should
be the same as mine. :D