latex - Latex Introduction - latex tutorial - latex tutorial
What is latex?
- LaTeX is a document preparation system, a special version of Donald Knuth's TeX program.
- TeX is a sophisticated program designed to produce high-quality typesetting, especially for mathematical text.
- It takes a computer file which is prepared according to the "rules" of TeX, and is converted to a form that may be printed on a high-quality printer, such as a laser writer, to produce a printed document of publication quality.
- Probably the reference for using LaTex is the "LaTeX User's Guide & Reference Manual" by Leslie Lamport, the author of LaTeX.
latex vs msword :
learn latex tutorial - latex vs msword - latex example programs
Latex Working:
- In typical "WYSIWYG" text processors, such as Microsoft Word or Word Perfect:
- Formatting commands are invisible.
- The file shows pretty much the final result.
- LaTeX, on the other hand, is a formatter rather than a text processor:
- The file includes commands that define structure.
- The formatting commands are visible.
- The process requires a compiler to format the final result.
learn latex tutorial - latext working - latex example
Input File:
- Example for a LaTex input file.
The Edit/Format/Preview Process
- Here's how you get from a blank emacs-19 window to a fully formatted, previewed.
- Put text and LaTeX commands in a file
- call the file anything
- add the extension ".tex"
- edit the file with emacs-19 repeatedly to make changes
- Issue the latex command to format the file
- latex filename.tex
- The result is a ".dvi" ("dvi" = device independent) file.
- Display the .dvi file with XWindows previewer xdvi
- xdvi filename.dvi
- Print with a UNIX command
- dvips filename.dvi | lpr -d filename.dvi
latex tutorial - latex file name - latex example
- Use LaTeX to convert running.tex (should already be in your latex directory) into a "dvi" file and the output is seen with xdvi.
Advantages of Latex :
- Complete concentration on documents not with layout of document.
- No need of manual type settings of height, width etc.
- Mathematical formulae can be easily typeset
- Index, footnotes, citations and references are generated easily.
- Forced to structure your documents correctly
- It natively supports PDF (Potable Document Format), DVI(Device Independent) file format but also PostScript, PNG, JPEG etc by using other software.
The Edit/Format/Preview Process LaTeX Document Structure:
- LaTeX document consists of:
- \documentstyle{article}
- preamble
- \begin{document}
- body
- \end{document}
- The preamble consists of the overall, document-wide LaTeX formatting commands.
- The body contains the text of the document and text formatting commands.
learn latex tutorial - latex introduction - latex example programs
General Principles:
- When creating a LaTeX input file, there are a few general principles to remember:
- All input, both text and formatting commands is in "ASCII" text.
- Spaces and line breaks are not important. A blank line starts a new paragraph, however.
- Commands all start with backslash:
- \documentstyle
- Braces are used for "arguments":
- \begin{document}
- Brackets are used for "optional arguments":
- \documentstyle[11pt]{article}
- Commands are case sensitive.
- \documentstyle not \DocumentStyle
- Some text characters must be generated by control sequences (i.e., quotes, {}, [], \, etc.).
Document Styles:
- The \documentstyle command describes the overall format of the document.
- There are four basic document styles:
- article - for short documents for publication
- report - for longer technical documents; like articles, but has chapters
- book - for large documents, such as books
- letter - for writing letters (has other special which have to be set)
Optional Argument for Document Styles:
- There are numerous optional arguments to \documentstyle:
- 11pt - uses 11-point type rather than the default point size
- 12pt - uses 12-point type rather than the default point size
- twoside - formats output for two-sided printing
- twocolumn - produces two-column output for printing
TeX Distributions :
- The distributions (have compiler, fonts and LaTeX macro set) for different Operating Systems:
- TeX Live -----for BSD, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Windows
- MikTeX------for Windows
- MacTeX-----for Mac OS X
- Compilers or Engines: generate output files from source
- luatex, lualatex----TeX engine with Lua scripting
- Pdftex, pdflatex---PDF compilers
- tex, latex -----------DVI compilers
- xetex, xelatex------TeX engine which uses Unicode
TeX Editors :
- TeX and LaTeX documents are all text files and can be opened and modified with all text editors (Ex: notepad, EditPlus) but not word processor (Word, OpenOffice).
- Dedicated LaTeX editors are more useful.
- Cross platform: BaKoMa TeX, Emacs, gedit-latex-plugin, LyX, TeXmaker, TeXstudio, TeX works, vim
- BSD* and GNU/Linux: kile, Gumni, LaTeXila
- Mac OS X: TeX Shop,
- Windows: Led, TeXnicCenter, WinEdt, WinShell
latex cheatsheet :
learn latex - latex tutorial - latex commands - latex example programs