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Is there any viable (meaning working) modern LaTeX alternative for expressing mathematics? Or is LaTex the accepted standard?

Slavomir Kaslev
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    This site is for questions about mathematics. If you're interested in TeX and LaTeX then there is a stackexchange site dedicated to that, http://tex.stackexchange.com, where you'll find a few answers to that question, starting from: http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/18349/86 (though you should also take note of the fact that these questions were closed so aren't really the sort of question that that site welcomes; nonetheless, you may get an answer that suits you in what you read there). – Andrew Stacey Aug 30 '11 at 18:01
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    I think on this occasion I disagree with Andrew: the question seems more likely to get an good answer here, since it is about the current practice of mathematics academics rather than about the workings or failing of LaTeX. (Descriptive, not normative.) – Yemon Choi Aug 30 '11 at 18:05
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    At this point, I would say that LaTeX is indeed the accepted standard for expressing mathematics. There are alternatives, but the vast majority of us use LaTeX. – Deane Yang Aug 30 '11 at 18:10
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    You should also remember that whether or not some alternative produces acceptable looking output, the file format itself is a barrier. For example, the arXiv doesn't accept any input format other than (La)TeX, and it's not likely you will find many collaborators who will be pleased with some unknown typesetting tool. Simply the difference between plain TeX and proper modern LaTeX probably already causes minor clashes. It is better to have consistent standards than perfect ones. – Ryan Reich Aug 30 '11 at 18:21
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    I cast the last vote to close. The direct motivation was that the question as written got answered by Deane Yang. I suspect that the questioner actually is interested in a list and or description of said alternatives (so they exist). If this should be the case, I suggest to edit the question to reflect this. –  Aug 30 '11 at 18:22
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    May I suggest Knuth's iTeX... http://river-valley.tv/media/conferences/tug-2010/Don-Knuth/ – François G. Dorais Aug 30 '11 at 18:31
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    Thank you. Deane Yang's answer was the one I was looking for. I'm sorry if the question was off topic. I'll be more careful next time. – Slavomir Kaslev Aug 30 '11 at 23:28
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    To further Ryan's comment: all math journals I've ever looked at the submissions page of ask for (La)TeX. This is not true in some other fields, where they (at least used to) expect Microsoft Word. – Allen Knutson Aug 31 '11 at 02:12
  • I don't have any direct experience, but many people at tex.stackexchange.com use ConTeXt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConTeXt), which is still TeX but not LaTeX (ok, I agree, this is hair-splitting, maybe). It's supposed to be more book publisher-friendly and provide more direct options to change the look of the page, rather than being content-oriented like LaTeX. – Federico Poloni Aug 31 '11 at 07:27

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