L_AT^EX: An Introduction and Jumpstart

Paul Schou

Michigan Tech University

Latex

• What is LaTeX?
• Documents and `their' production
• Learning the lingo
• More examples

What Is LaTeX?

• Pre and Post processor for document markup
• WYSIWYW
• Supports standards such as MLA, APA, AMS, and more.
• A quick and easy way of writing letters and jouryied articles for publication.

Documents you can do

• Letter
• Article / Lab reports
• Busness Cards
• Test or quizes, write ups
• Music Scores (Musixtex)

A letter: How to begin

• Get your self a text editor
• Don't worry about layout; just type!
• LaTeX does its `Magic'
• Your done

Lab Reports / Articles

• Type up the text and mathematics making % marks for comments where you need to place graphics
• Place the graphics
• TeX
• Print

Business Cards

• Get the glitzy things together
• Setup what you want to have on the card
• Lay in your information
• TeX it
• Print

Tests and Quizes

• Fitting for Math, Physics, Engineering, Arts, and more
• Extremely compadable for web publication
• Mathematics, tables, and Diagrams are all in one place
• It puts logic in to the layout so you don't have to

Music

• The score and the lyrics all in one file
• abc2mtex helps with quick tabulation and can be used to generate midi output, which can be used in electric orgins
• Music is not the end of the list but just one of the newer examples of something which can be done well in LaTeX

The `Lingo'

• Quotes are single, or single-single, or single-single-single, and so on with forward ` and backward ' styles.
• Special characters, % $ \ & < >
• % denotes a comment
• $ begins and ends a math typeset
• \ is used to denote a command or can be used to ignore a special character such as \%, or make a new line \\
• & tab between fields in a table
• < > reserved, where one uses these are often in math formulas, computer source code, in these times $ or verbose is what one really wants
• Remember it is always text, there is no compadability issues with text based files.

The Advantages

• With one file you can go anywhere and do anything
• The most versatile language for documents
• Easy to use and produce professional documents quickly
• With editors such as MikTek, TeXShop, and Lyx layout is plain simple and fun.
• Allows for quick and easy changes in the future without compatability issues

In Summary

• With minimal effort one can have an effective document and presentation
• As like this slide show done in S⁵ format LaTeX is quick and easy with a really nice end result
• Questions?