I write a lot of scientific reports using LaTeX. It wouldn’t count as zenware (at least not using my current Windows GUI; guess I could go back to writing everything in vi) but this post got me thinking. Quite apart from the advantages over Word regarding formulae etc., writing in a markup language allows me to concentrate on the content, without worrying about the presentation (a familiar meme from coding webpages). I know that the typesetting and arrangement is mostly taken care of, or can be worried about at a later date, and all I’m staring at is unformatted plain text.

Interestingly, students who are learning LaTeX normally find this hardest to assimilate. They worry more about why picture x is on page y than they do about the accompanying text. Flavours of Merlin’s perfect apostrophe.