I'm not nor a TeXnicians nor a TeXpert but I use LaTeX for pretty any formal pdf document I produce, having used it for thesis, reports, letters, business cards, countless of times.
I found hard to read VERY complex graphic code, like PGF/TikZ especially if badly formatted, some complex custom class/packages for specific stuff etc, but not much hard most of the time and most of the time I just write plain LaTeX in a simple style:
- first I write my document in pure formatted text, with LaTeX just for something can't be easily written in text like math or so common typographic elements like an itemize/enumerate, a yasnippet away;
- then I add the rest of the template and check the visual/typesetting aspects while I'm re-read my doc looking for typos, phrases to be better reformulated etc
No need to rebuild so many times and no issue in build time, on a reasonably modern machine is quick enough for essentially all common docs, it might be a very little bit slow not enough to annoy on VERY big special docs who need various works aside anyway not for LaTeX but for mere proofreading and typographic checks.
IMVHO I think that some like the authors came from the uncivilized modern world where well typeset docs are unknown and where people just know WebUIs to click around and quickly produce something prepackaged even if suboptimal and generally bad in quality terms.
I see such behaviors many time where even skilled people do not understand that their docs are graphic heavy crap just because they do not know typography nor typographic conventions of their own country/institution. That's not an issue no LaTeX or other layer (like ConTeXt) can solve, it's a social issue, not a technical one. People should for instance learn why tables should not be like those crappy tables spitted for some spreadsheet tools on a pdf or pages drawn with such crappy margins their favorite "Office Automation" crapplication produce.
In general IMVHO people in the famous "missed CS concepts" courses like the MIT one, typography should be a topic because right now too many do not know how to write on pen and paper BUT also do not know how to write on a desktop, to a level just above the minimum literacy demanded by our society. Not joking nor insulting, that's what I see EVEN from professional publishers.
I found hard to read VERY complex graphic code, like PGF/TikZ especially if badly formatted, some complex custom class/packages for specific stuff etc, but not much hard most of the time and most of the time I just write plain LaTeX in a simple style:
- first I write my document in pure formatted text, with LaTeX just for something can't be easily written in text like math or so common typographic elements like an itemize/enumerate, a yasnippet away;
- then I add the rest of the template and check the visual/typesetting aspects while I'm re-read my doc looking for typos, phrases to be better reformulated etc
No need to rebuild so many times and no issue in build time, on a reasonably modern machine is quick enough for essentially all common docs, it might be a very little bit slow not enough to annoy on VERY big special docs who need various works aside anyway not for LaTeX but for mere proofreading and typographic checks.
IMVHO I think that some like the authors came from the uncivilized modern world where well typeset docs are unknown and where people just know WebUIs to click around and quickly produce something prepackaged even if suboptimal and generally bad in quality terms.
I see such behaviors many time where even skilled people do not understand that their docs are graphic heavy crap just because they do not know typography nor typographic conventions of their own country/institution. That's not an issue no LaTeX or other layer (like ConTeXt) can solve, it's a social issue, not a technical one. People should for instance learn why tables should not be like those crappy tables spitted for some spreadsheet tools on a pdf or pages drawn with such crappy margins their favorite "Office Automation" crapplication produce.
In general IMVHO people in the famous "missed CS concepts" courses like the MIT one, typography should be a topic because right now too many do not know how to write on pen and paper BUT also do not know how to write on a desktop, to a level just above the minimum literacy demanded by our society. Not joking nor insulting, that's what I see EVEN from professional publishers.