latex:accessible math

[Jason White]

Scott D. Henning <speakup at linux-speakup.org> wrote:
>The response about LaTex from Liz is right on. I actually use LaTex 
>often for work that might be done in Word, once you get over the first 
>hump to learn it and get some templates built, it is easy to re use 
>them.  Since I am only legally blind, I can tell the output is really 
>good and you are less likely to "break" the document in LaTex than a 
>word processor that takes any keystroke or mouse move as a command.

In 1998 I switched from WordPerfect (a word processor) to LaTeX for all of my
writing (aside from Web pages, which are prepared in HTML).

I much prefer LaTeX to a word processor. With LaTeX, I can tell exactly what
is in my document simply by reading the source text. The typeset quality is
better than that of a word processor, according to publishers and specialists
in typography who have used LaTeX for professional purposes. AUCTeX mode in
Emacs is a very convenient tool to reduce typing and make entry of the LaTeX
commands more convenient. LaTeX is actually a macro system built upon the
underlying TeX typesetting tool, and as such, it's programmable.

I wrote my Ph.D. thesis in LaTeX. I wrote law school essays in LaTeX - no
mathematics involved in those. My CV is in LaTeX as well. Handouts for
university presentations can easily be written in LaTeX. There are classes and
packages for these and many other applications.

You can read the generated PDF file with braille or speech output to some
extent by converting it to text with the pdftotext tool.

As others have mentioned, there are numerous tutorials and sources of
documentation available online. You are welcome to ask me if you would like
some references to suitable material.

The only circumstance in which I would use a word processor is a situation
requiring collaborative editing of a document with a person who does not use
LateX.

Also, if you're preparing documents in LaTeX, you should learn how to use a
revision control tool such as Git to track changes to your work. Git is
especially good for this, as there is an option that will give you
word-by-word diffs rather than line-by-line, and it will even take TeX/LaTeX
syntax into account if you specify the right option.