The real shocker is that it’s 2022 and LaTeX is still the best writing environment for a PhD thesis. It has so many downsides: the markup syntax is ugly, it really works best only if one used paginated output such as PDF, a zoo of partly incompatible packages, need for compilation, obscure figure placing algorithms that are difficult to control, and so on.
It still beats the competition because of rock-solid referencing, both to in-text elements like equations, chapters, etc as well as citing literature with bibtex.
Plus, it’s extremely stable, so someone who learnt LaTeX 20 years ago, like yours truly, can download the newest TeX distribution and feel at home immediately.
Nevertheless, I would prefer a Markdown-based system that can use CSS and MathML, and has a 100% bibtex clone for references.
Yes, pandoc goes quite a long way along this route, but setting up such a pipeline is still too complicated for many.
It still beats the competition because of rock-solid referencing, both to in-text elements like equations, chapters, etc as well as citing literature with bibtex.
Plus, it’s extremely stable, so someone who learnt LaTeX 20 years ago, like yours truly, can download the newest TeX distribution and feel at home immediately.
Nevertheless, I would prefer a Markdown-based system that can use CSS and MathML, and has a 100% bibtex clone for references.
Yes, pandoc goes quite a long way along this route, but setting up such a pipeline is still too complicated for many.