textbook-style opinions please

“Set phasers to sneer!”

Okay, I will make the “different” suggestion. Have you considered using Markdown? I love using it to make the writing part as simple as possible and (not unlike Dorico’s engraving mode) save the rendering templates for “pretty” for later. As far as Markdown editors, I like using IAWriter.

Word to me is like driving around in a 1985 Ford Crown Victoria.

I’m not an InDesign user, but the basic idea of LaTeX is that the user input defines the semantics of the document and LaTeX does the layout. That is kind of similar to Dorico, except that at the lowest level of LaTeX you can write your own code (in a fully functional programming language) to define the layout. More likely, if you want to create something that looks like a book you use a pre-written “package” which has lots of customization options, like Dorico’s “options” dialogs. (The user guide for my usual choice of book-creation package is a 600-page document, produced using the package itself).

The biggest limitation on page layout is that LaTeX doesn’t handle multi-column text very well. Or rather, it doesn’t handle a mixture of multi-column text and “randomly” positioned graphic images, unless the images either occupy the full page width, or fit in one column.

The “semantic input” philosophy means it is great for working on huge projects (“huge” as in creating multiple documents totalling thousands of pages and marking up hyperlinked cross references, index entries, tables of contents, glossaries, etc, both within and between the individual documents.)

Since LaTeX input is basically text files, and the input for one project can be split into multiple sub-files more or less any way you like, it is ideal for using version control software, working on multi-user collaborations, etc.

Plus, it has very powerful tools for typesetting math (indeed that’s what it was originally written to do) - but if you don’t need them, they don’t get in the way.

Thanks Rob for your input. I’m guessing you are using the Memoir package (that’s my choice too).
I can change a complex libretto layout from A4 page to iphone6 (not the same size of “frame” nor the same size of text, for legibility reasons) without a single layout mistake, changing some lines in my preamble. I don’t think it would be possible with any other tool. Plus it’s free.

I’m already trying to herd the sheep belonging to PostScript, Python, Lua, Swift, Gregorio abc, HTML and God knows what else into separate pens in my brain. Learning a code for LaTeX (or Lilypond) is a definite turn-off.

Thanks rob, you explained it way better than I ever could!

I‘ll look into memoir, I am myself only using basic packages like KOMA scripts.

@ben I don’t use it often, but I have a set of templates of the stuff I want to do. The rest is usually just typing content and some small googling actions every now and then.
I also like it because, similar to galley view, I can focus on the content in the code with no formatting and no „frames“ making me want to constantly think about layout.
I am a pretty visual guy, and using Word/Pages and in fact other notation programs always slowed me down too much because I got distracted with the wrong things. This is why I love Dorico, too!

You guessed right, I do use the memoir package. I wouldn’t call KOMA “basic” though. The most basic book package was imaginatively called “book”. It’s pretty limited but it has the advantage that the input is very compatible with packages for other package formats, for example if you want to produce a book from a collection of papers originally published in academic journals or conference proceedings.

If anybody wants to learn LaTeX from scratch, I would suggest starting with a system called Overleaf (https://www.overleaf.com/) which works in a web browser (so you don’t have to install any software yourself) and has good documentation of the basics of how to create documents. The basic “personal” version is free.

The two main “installable” (and free) versions are MikTeX and TexLive. (FWIW I started with MikTeX, got annoyed by the slow rate of support for bug fixes, and moved to TexLive years ago). But getting to grips with either of those starting from zero knowledge (and without somebody to give “hands on” help if you get stuck) could be pretty overwhelming.