LaTeX

From Better Practices

LaTeX (pronounced "lay tek" or "lah tek") is a document preparation system for high quality typesetting. The term typeset translates literally as set in type. The primary difference between a typesetting systems and word processors is that typesetting systems allow authors to focus on their content while providing presentation flexibility whereas the very nature of word processors tend to focus more (and generally not so well) on presentation. Since authors should initially be more concerned with their content rather than its presentation and since few authors possess an adequate understanding of typography needed to produce professional quality output, they should rely on the assistance of a typesetting system. Word processors simply omit too many details needed to attain this professional quality.

In the late 1970's Donald Knuth was revising the second volume of his The Art of Computer Programming series and was disgusted with the presentation of his work from the publisher. He then decided to develop a typesetting system, which he later called TeX (pronounced "tek"), that facilitated professional quality output. Since TeX is too low level for many users, in the mid 1980's Leslie Lamport created a collection of macros for the purpose of simplifying the use of TeX. This collection is known as LaTeX (as in "Lamport TeX")

Authors that prefer TeX, LaTeX, or any other TeX derivative over other typesetting systems or desktop publishing software generally do so because of TeX's superiority at presenting mathematics. LaTeX is now the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents, especially those containing mathematics.

Contents 1 Prerequisites 1.1 Microsoft Windows 1.2 Linux 1.3 Mac 2 Resources 2.1 Free online documentation 2.2 Popular LaTeX Books

[edit] Prerequisites

To get started using LaTeX, users may choose to use Troy Henderson's LaTeX Previewer instead of installing any additional software. The LaTeX Previewer takes LaTeX code snippets as input and displays a preview of the output. The output can be saved in a variety of image formats including EPS, PDF, and SVG.

The output of (La)TeX documents is a device independent (DVI) format, and this format can be converted to many types of other formats including PostScript (PS), Portable Document Format (PDF), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), among others. PS and PDF are generally preferred for print where HTML is a nice format for onscreen viewing.

As an alternative to using the LaTeX Previewer, users may choose to install the standalone tools needed to edit, compile, and view LaTeX documents. The tools needed to use LaTeX include a text editor, (La)TeX engine, and a viewer. Below is a list of common tools used on different platforms.

[edit] Resources

There is an abundance of documentation for LaTeX both on the web and purchasable books. A few resources are listed below.