My Documents: LaTeX for the Nontechnical User

“As a computer user, you almost undoubtedly use a word processor
to create your documents. A word processor is a powerful tool that
simplifies the creation of documents using a What You See Is What
You Get approach. This means that the document you see in the
editor as you are composing it is the same document that will be
printed out when you press the ‘print’ button. However, this
convenience comes at a price: the ease to impose structure on the
document. Microsoft Word does not know that you are writing a book,
Open Office does not know that the text you just entered was in
fact the title of your document. It’s not that structure is
altogether impossible to control in word processors; after all,
most word processors do have heading and subheading tools, as well
as various templates that make things easier for the user. Have you
ever felt out of control while using a word processor? Have you
ever felt that the program doesn’t understand what you are trying
to do? I know I have…”

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