When people see 'The Latex Companion' on my book shelf, they think I'm a bit kinky. They're right of course, but not quite in the way that crosses their dirty little minds.

I really do love beautifully laid out pages and none is better at this job than Latex. Those laid out in Microsoft Word are just plain ugly - in fact it is usually very easy to tell when something has been laid out using Microsoft Word, because the spaces are all the wrong size.

I also have a few problems with Latex. As much as I love the beautiful layouts, Latex can be really complicated. I mean really, really complicated. It can take a long time to learn. If you, like me don't use it everyday, all those commands, so painstakingly learned, are quickly forgotten.

Here are some other problems that I have with Latex:

• I don't like the default font Computer Modern - it looks too "bookish"
• I don't many of the default layouts, especially the letter layout
• I always need to change the default page size
• To do anything else like newsletters and business cards is difficult
• A document marked up in Latex can be difficult for a human to read

For these reasons, I stopped using Latex and started using Abiword or OpenOffice when I wanted to produce a document with a reasonable layout, that is, a letter. If I'm not writing a letter then usually I'm writing an email and fancy layout is not required.

However, this discussion thread, started me looking at Latex again. Here are some tips from it:

• Don't create your own template if you have a life.
• Search for suitable templates
• For large works - theses and research papers - it produces better layout than anything else.

After reading that thread, I've been inspired again to look at Latex and will certainly keep it in mind when I want to layout a longer work.

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