LaTeX, pronounced “La-Tec”, is a document preparation language that treats creating many types of document files like constructing a shell script. LaTeX uses a “What You See is What You Mean” interface, far removed from the WYSIWYG word processors like Word and OpenOffice. LaTeX is a programming language, but don’t let that scare you away. Like many things in open source, the learning curve may be steep, but the view from the top is fantastic.