One of my longstanding wishes was for Microsoft to offer something competitive with LaTeX.  The few things that make LaTeX continue to exist, in my opinion, is 1. separation of content and layout (which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes not).  2. Better support for references and citation.  and 3. Better typography.

Any thoughts on the typographical advantages of LaTeX versus the future directions on Cleartype, etc?

How about mathematical typesetting?  You can make crudely drawn equations in Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0, but it doesn't cut it for more formal publications.

The current Microsoft offering here is rather poor, and its unfortunate because it forces a lot of Microsoft enthusiast like me to write documents in LaTeX, a painful process.

Brian