LaTeX
LaTeX is a standard of mathematical and scientific publishing.
The basic TeX engine was developed by renowned computer
scientisit Donald Knuth at Stanford and made freely available to
the community of computer users. It runs on essentially all
computer platforms. Most current users use a set of "macros"
called LaTeX built on the TeX engine to provide a higher-level
interface for the user.
Introduction
In a word processor, typing your first document is a piece of
cake. You launch the program and start typing. Sadly, most LaTeX
implementations make that first document much more of a
challenge. However, the stability of LaTeX, its ability to
handle mathematics and text, in short documents and long ones,
and the superior quality of the typeset text make learning it
worth your effort.
- Most UNIX systems have TeX installed. To process a document with
LaTex, for example, type latex filename. See, for
example, the page
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/qref/latex/qref
- For Windows users, a popular TeX implementation is MikTeX, which
is a free download from www.miktex.org, along with the
companion editor WinEdt, a shareware program available at
www.winedt.com. The editor
includes a spell checker and support for MikTeX.
- On Macintosh, I am most familiar with Andrew Trevorrow's OzTeX shareware
program, which I use in conjuction with the text editor AlphaX
(for MacOS X), and Alpha8
(for earlier versions of the Macintosh operating system). Users
of OS X may wish to consider TeXShop,
a free TeX editor and viewer that uses the PDFTeX engine to
produce PDF output straight from TeX. Since OS X uses display
PostScript for on-screen drawing, this approach is particularly
efficient. On the other hand, the text editor in TeXShop is not
as powerful as Alpha.
Some resources for using LaTeX
A Trivial Example
Taking as the prototype of scientific equations Einstein's
venerable classic E = m c^2, let us create a LaTeX document that describes this
important equation. Click on the link to display the document,
which you can save on your local disk for processing with LaTeX.
A More Involved Example
Here's a very trivial document, to get you up and running with PNS.sty. For a
more detailed example, try the source code
for exercise 1.
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[math,headers,noapple]{PNS} % other options: problems,
nographics
\renewcommand{\theTitle}{My Jolly Title}
\begin{document}
Stuff as normal. See the actual file for what is loaded and what
definitions are made. Eventually, I may document.
\end{document}