A mini D book: Markdown or LaTeX?

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 27 January 2017 at 11:05:41 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
> On Thursday, 26 January 2017 at 10:26:25 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> Er, yes. That's how it works. Always ask the publisher first. 
>> But that wasn't the question. The question was Markdown or 
>> LaTeX, and if you want to generate your own PDF for e.g. a 
>> M.A. or Ph.D., some people prefer LaTeX because of the fine 
>> grained control it offers. I don't know a single Ph.D. student 
>> who used Word who didn't have to fight with Word stubbornly 
>> restructuring the layout. The footnotes, the graphics ... a 
>> nightmare.
>
> I believe I just used the default Word style. It's a goddamned 
> text, why it needs any sort of sophisticated layout aside from 
> fitting the page? I had no problem with footnotes maybe because 
> I believe they shouldn't exists in such documents in the first 
> place: if you want to write something, just write it where it 
> fits. It's baffling to see footnotes in ISO standards: if it's 
> something important, write it where it belongs, W3C and IETF 
> got it right, their documents have no footnotes.

Yes, you are right of course. In a perfect world we'd just write 
a text and give the odd reference. Unfortunately, anyone who 
writes an M.A., M.Sc. or Ph.D. thesis has to reference 
everything. Not even the most basic concept can be mentioned 
without referencing a book written by some professor(s). If a 
student writes "1 + 1 = 2" s/he has to reference it with a 
footnote à la "[1] Smith, T. & Wesson, J. Basic Concepts of 
Arithmetics - An Introduction. Cambridge, 2001."

If you fail to do so, they will grill you. I know, it's 
ridiculous. Having said this, depending on the topic, you do need 
to insert footnotes - either to guide / help your readers or to 
shut up potential critics :-)