Latex - A mathematical typesetting program
Donald Knuth originally developed TeX to be a system that could do technical typesetting. TeX is a very powerful typesetting system, but has a steep learning curve. In the mid 1980's, Leslie Lamport developed an extension to TeX, called LaTeX (can you guess why?) that had an easier learning curve. LaTeX tried to take all of the global typesetting decisions and put the in style files. There are files for articles, reports, books, and many more. Thus, the user of LaTeX could concentrate on content, which is their primary concern anyway. Currently, LaTeX is the typesetting system of choice for many (most?) academic mathematicians. Several journals require submission of papers written in LaTeX.
Where to get it
TeX and LaTeX are open source programs (that were developed before open source really became popular). Therefore, they are easy to obtain for nearly any operating system and hardware configuration. The most popular free distribution seems to be TeTeX, but there are other flavors out there. I try to provide links below to the easiest.
- Windows: MikTex This appears to be the most popular TeX system for windows and is very easy to install. It appears to be based at least originally, on the teTeX tree.
- MacOSX: TeTeX is available two different ways. I suggest that you download the i-installer written by Gerben Wierda. It is OSX native software that will download and install TeX and other programs related to it. It works very well. Another option would be to install Fink, which is a repository of Unix or Linux code (well, FreeBSD probably) that can run on the Mac under Apples X11 server.
You can install TeX from there, and run it on the command line in a terminal. For most users, the i-installer is easier unless they already have fink for some other reason.
- Linux or BSD: TeTeX usually comes with most Linux distributions, though it is usually not installed by default. Depending on your distribution, you must use whatever package manager you have, whether it is apt-get, rpm or something else to install it on your system. You usually need to install more than one package. The relevant ones will probably have tetex in the name of the file.
How do I use it?
Once you have TeX and LaTeX installed, you should be able to use it as follows:
- Write your LaTeX markup using any ASCII editor. In windows you can use notepad, wordpad, or something else (see below). In OSX you could use the text editor (textwrite) and in linux, you could use vi or emacs.Save your file with the extension .tex
- In a terminal (Command prompt? in windows?) type latex filename.tex. Then, depending on your system, you may need to type dvi2ps filename.dvi and ps2pdf filename.ps. Or if you have pdf latex, you could type pdflatex filename.tex and get filename.pdf from it.
Other useful programs:
Even though emacs afficionados may disagree, your life will probably be easier if you install an editor that knows about LaTeX (Emacs does, by the way). Below I list some choices. This is not a comprehensive list, just the programs that I am familiar with. For a comprehensive list, go to
wikipedia.
- WinEdt(Windows) is a powerful editor that understands tex and automates much of the tasks you would ordinarily have to do in a terminal. It is the editor of choice for windows users in our department. It is also not free. Though it is shareware, it becomes quickly unuseable after 30 days. It is worth the cost, though, if you can afford it.
- TeXmaker is a LaTeX editor that runs on Windows, OSX and Linux. I don't have much experience with it on the windows side, but tried it on the linux side, and it works pretty well. It is also open source, and therefore free. So, if you don't want to pay for WinEdt, give TeXmaker a try.
- Texshop is a LaTeX editor for Mac OSX. It is my editor of choice. It has most of the features of MikTeX, but for the Mac. It is also open source, and therefore, (you guessed it) free.
Mathematics Department