It might come across as peculiar that I choose to write my articles in LaTeX and put them out on the web as PDF files, especially when lots of easier markups and browser-friendly alternatives are available. Although I don’t owe an explanation to anyone about the choices I make for my personal webpage, I must remind myself of the reasons behind the choice when self-doubts and temptations of easier formats will arise.
- It looks beautiful and is an archival format. Just for sheer aesthetic pleasure, I will use LaTeX and compile documents to PDF.
- My writings contain a lot of mathematics, figures/diagrams, code, tables, charts, etc. Nothing beats LaTeX for typesetting and controlling the output in such documents.
- Mathjax and Katex might be sufficient for mathematical content in HTML, but I just don’t like HTML as an output format for such kind of documents. The lack of predictable arrangements of mathematical elements in the output irks me.
- In my job I write a lot of HTML-friendly content using easier markups that are excellent for code and tables, and occasional illustrations. So for my personal writings I prefer something different.
- I romanticize academia, especially mathematics. LaTeX gives me a taste of that in my personal writings. If not for anything else, I would continue using LaTeX because of it’s association with academia.
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