I observed it on myself:
When I started computering in the 1980s (you,
lgrant, started earlier, so nothing new for you what comes now
)
the very few first rendering/typesetting/WYSIWYG systems were in their very early experimenting babyshoes - if even available on accessable machines.
There was just pure text - texteditors - only. Not even the possibility to even change the font. You could switch between two, or three screen modes, but that was it. Same thing at our local newspaper I used to work as a pupil to write (tiny) articels - exactly what you described: Typesetting? Not even remotely touchable.
It was a good thing, but I didn't knew it back then.
Later in the early 90s, most were still using typewriters, but at our Technical U most were switching to computers quickly. Like my girlfriend at this time. Got her first 80386 for using WordPerfect on Win 3.11.
But when the first WYSIWYG systems become available, and quickly standard, I already was using LaTeX.
Point was back then all I had was an Amiga 2000 - as a student I couldn't afford to buy me a new computer shortly again; and why. It was a very nice machine. Fully sufficient. With one deficit: There was nothing really useful avaible for the Amiga which produced some document you could drop shameless at the university.
Nothing even remotely capable to write a thesis with.
But there already was LaTeX for Amiga - which I didn't ever heard of that time.
(Maybe this reaches some who were involved in that: Thank you
very much to port LaTeX to the Amiga! You not only helped me a lot, but delivered the right horse before I was corrupted by wordprocessors.
)
So a friend of mine - the local Amiga user group already all used TeX - installed me LaTeX on my Amiga - no internet then, so doing the diskjockey on dozens of 3,5" diskettes for almost a weekend -
...?)
But it worked.
Sometimes a bit slowly - "dannd; she needs to render a font, again *sigh* okay, time for the groceries" - but it worked!
And not only that.
The results were brilliant, uncomparable with what the WordPerfect/Word-Users delivered.
While some were doing diagrams not seldom still by hand, I already used Gnuplot.
Some of the teachers were amazed:"Wow! That looks great! How did you do that?" ?
And it was all for free. While a license for a wordprocessor even at student's rates cost (I can't remember, but for a student it was something about half the month's rent, or so.)
Well not completely for free - you had to learn it.
That's the crucial point of all Windows-crap up to day: You pay money for the illusion you may not need to learn anything.
And not only that.
LaTeX was reliable.
While others came into the pub late at night, completely stressed, because their fantastic, fancy, and expensive Word-system already crashed again - more than a dozen pages containing several graphics could have brought those machines back then way over their limit; and Windows was anything but rock solid (while Amiga OS was older but pretty solid) - fumbled manually with not matching pagenumbers, and tables of contents, wasted a lot of paper for printing, because still a single word appeared on an else empty page although their fancy "WYSIWYG" shown different - not to mention about no regular saves, of course not; backups? what is 'backups'?
, empty printer cartdriges, no paper, naturally late at night on a weekend, and of course monday was deadline...???
-
we LaTeX users were: ?
?
?
?
?
?
"Use LaTeX!! For Christ's sake! It's no rocket science! We're all done for a week - with no stress at all!"
Back then I worked with emacs.
So my normal workflow on writing something always was to separate text from typesetting.
Later on the job as an employee in companys of course there always were Windows machines only, with MS Office, of course. So I had to work with Word.
I
hated it.
It's so inefficient, so time wasting - could have done a better job in less than half the time with LaTeX, its UI is so not-intuitive, its usage illogical, its files are bloated, its results look so ugly ... -
Word sucks!
So I installed a Tex-Live system on all my office machines, and every document not to be edited by others (e.g. datasheets I produced for my electronics) I did in LaTeX.
I needed some oasis of efficient, intuitive work, not always
?? all the time.
Even later when I became self-employed: Good bye MS Office!
Even later: Good bye Windows!
Hello FreeBSD, Hello LaTeX, Hello vim ?
And I still observe it on myself.
When I have to use some WYSIWYG system, some wordprocessor again, at two-and-a-half pages at the latest, my concentration is so wasted, distracted by looking at, and keep the typesetting correct all the time - otherwise it annoys me much, I simply lost the thread several times, even forgot what I wanted to write; not really thinking about anymore how to phrase something better, sometimes even give a damn about the spelling, just get it on the paper somehow.
Using the texteditor only, and just write, don't even look at the line's length -I recommend to activate automatic line breaks, especially when writing texts using vi[m]; and chose a good readable font for your terminal; but that's it.
I can write a dozen pages.
And my language is way better.
Typesetting comes afterwards.
So, yes.
