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Motivation:

Most of the time, there would be people which find (La)TeX but is not sure about whether it will suit their needs or not (e.g., see this question). These people want to see the capabilities and some "results" of using (La)TeX instead of only code.

Given that most FAQ's and related sites provide only code for people who already use (La)TeX but are facing problems with the code, newcomers have problems with finding samples of compiled source code and visual examples to evaluate whether it will suit their needs.

Proposal:

Would it be good to have a compilation of examples of the capabilities of (La)TeX, a la texample, in which new comers or people that is discovering (La)TeX can see the wide range of usability of (La)TeX. Can we summarize the (La)TeX features here? or it would be better to gather those in some other site, like extending texample over than TikZ?

For example, I know that (La)TeX can embed code and format it, draw music, include figures in really complex ways, what else can you point out? Can we produce a (hopefully) complete list?

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This currently exists in a quite-comprehensive form as Showcase of beautiful typography done in TeX & friends, currently ranked as the second-highest voted post on TeX.SE.

In brief, it includes posts that covers fonts (using lettrine), decorations (using pstricks and pgf, one source producing multiple targets, multi-column document in the form of a dictionary, music and, of course, ducks and many more. There's also an external TeX showcase.

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    I don't think that this collection is particularly newcomer-friendly; the answers typically don't provide code easily understandable for newbies; what it shows are mostly the results of highly involved work, sporting numerous features and concepts in one document. I think @adn was rather looking for/proposing a collection of MWEs showcasing single features of LaTeX or single packages.
    – doncherry
    Dec 29, 2012 at 20:01
  • @doncherry: I agree. In general it may also be difficult to assess what would be considered new-comer/noob worthy/friendly without stating the obvious (you can include figures, tables, text, titles, ...). My answer references the quote "there would be people [that] find (La)TeX but [are] not sure about whether it will suit their needs or not". In that sense Showcase of beautiful typography done in TeX & friends could help with the decision since it shows some nifty end-result usages of LaTeX, however complicated it may be.
    – Werner Mod
    Dec 29, 2012 at 20:11
  • @doncherry It takes quite a while to learn how to use LaTeX properly, so in my opinion most newbies will usually fail in creating typographically beautiful documents. If you already know LaTeX and wish to create a nice document you must know about the typography, decide on a design, and then see how to implement it in LaTeX. Most users stand on the shoulders of giants and select an existing class/package. When they want to change the style they usually find this is not so easy (many questions in TeX.SX are about tweaking style). I'd say that newcomer-friendly examples with code are impossible.
    – user10274
    Dec 30, 2012 at 1:15

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