LaTeX

From Free net encyclopedia

LATEX, written as LaTeX in plain text, is a document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program.

It offers programmable desktop publishing features and extensive facilities for automating most aspects of typesetting and desktop publishing, including numbering and cross-referencing, tables and figures, page layout, bibliographies, and much more. LaTeX was originally written in 1984 by Leslie Lamport and has become the dominant method for using TeX—few people write in plain TeX anymore. The current version is LaTeX2ε. Both LaTeX and TeX are free software.

Image:LaTeX logo.svg

Contents

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Pronunciation

LaTeX is usually pronounced Template:IPA2 (like "lay-tek") or Template:IPA (like "lah-tek"). The last character in the name comes from a capital chi, as the name of TeX derives from the Greek τέχνη (skill, art, technique). While TeX's creator Donald Knuth promoted the Template:IPA pronunciation, Lamport has said he doesn't favor or deprecate any pronunciation for LaTeX. It is traditionally printed with the special typographical logo shown on this page. In media where the logo cannot be precisely reproduced in running text, the word is typically given the unique capitalization LaTeX to avoid confusion with the word "latex".

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The typesetting system

Image:LaTeX Document in Apple Preview.png LaTeX is based on the idea that authors should be able to concentrate on writing within the logical structure of their document, rather than spending their time on the details of formatting. It encourages the separation of layout from content, whilst still allowing manual typesetting adjustments where needed. Because the author specifies the logical structure of the document, and lets the LaTeX system worry about the presentation, it is often regarded as superior to word processors and most other desktop publishing systems, which allow trivially easy visual layout changes but tend to intertwine content and form so tightly that consistency and automation are often difficult. LaTeX also provides great flexibility in formatting while maintaining the identity of structure, which purely structural systems like SGML and XML do not directly address.

LaTeX can be arbitrarily extended by using the underlying macro language for developing custom formats. For example, there are numerous commercial implementations of the whole TeX system (which includes LaTeX), and vendors may offer extra features like phone support and additional typefaces. LyX is a free visual document processor that uses LaTeX for a back-end. TeXmacs is a free, WYSIWYG editor with similar functionalities as LaTeX, but a different typesetting engine.

A number of popular commercial DTP systems use modified versions of the original TeX typesetting engine. The recent rise in popularity of XML systems and the demand for large-scale batch production of publication-quality typesetting from such sources has seen a steady increase in the use of LaTeX.

The example below shows an example of a LaTeX input (left) and output (right):

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\title{\LaTeX}
\date{}
\begin{document}
\maketitle \LaTeX{} is a document preparation system for the \TeX{} typesetting program. It offers programmable desktop publishing features and extensive facilities for automating most aspects of typesetting and desktop publishing, including numbering and cross-referencing, tables and figures, page layout, bibliographies, and much more. \LaTeX{} was originally written in 1984 by Leslie Lamport and has become the dominant method for using \TeX; few people write in plain \TeX{} anymore. The current version is \LaTeXe.
\newline
% This is a comment, it is not shown in the final output.
% The following shows a little of the typesetting power of LaTeX
\begin{eqnarray}
E &=& mc^2 \\
m &=& \frac{m_0}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}
\end{eqnarray}
\end{document}

Image:LaTeX Output.png

Online LaTex, which uses this example.

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Community

Image:Leslie Lamport.jpg

LaTeX was originally most commonly used by mathematicians and scientists, amongst whom it remains the favored tool for writing papers, preprints, and books. Because of the underlying TeX system, originally developed for documents with mathematics, laying out mathematical expressions is considered to be easier, and the resulting typesetting of higher quality, than any competing document-processing systems. Many scientific journals and other publishers provide free LaTeX packages which implement their "in-house" typesetting styles.

The popularity of LaTeX in the technical and academic communities is perhaps partly due to its early availability on Unix systems, and the comparative unavailability of competing word processors on those platforms until recently. But from an early stage LaTeX was available on a wider range of hardware and software than any other program, and versions are now available for almost any system from PDAs to desktop PCs to supercomputers.

LaTeX is less popular than mainstream desktop publishing software outside the technical communities for several reasons. It is regarded as hard to learn for people with no previous experience of markup languages. Although it is very easy to customise the appearance of articles, books, and reports, using only a handful of instructions, it remains basically a typesetter for automating document production, not a manual page design program, so performing complex visual layouts incorporating multiple images is difficult. Another barrier to usage for many is the asynchronous interface used in most free versions, where editing is done in a different window from the typeset display. Inverse search can be used to bridge this problem partially. Several commercial implementations, however, use a synchronous typographic display like other DTP systems (as does the non-commercial and open source LyX). Alternatively, GNU TeXmacs is a free WYSIWYG editor which offers features similar to LaTeX, but is based on a different typesetting engine.

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Licensing issues

LaTeX is distributed under a free software licence, the LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL). The LPPL is not compatible with the GNU General Public License, as it requires that modified files carry a modified filename; this was done to ensure that files that depend on other files will produce the expected behavior and avoids problems similar to DLL hell. A new version of the LPPL that will be compatible with the GPL is in the works. The LPPL is DFSG compliant since its version 1.3.


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Editors and IDEs

There are a plethora of editors and IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) available. So many, in fact, that you should be able to find one that suits your document-creation style, regardless of what that style is.

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Tools

Various peripheral tools to automate LaTeX typesetting.

  • LaTeX2RTF Translator program which is intended to convert a LaTeX document into the RTF format.
  • LaTeX Makefile A GNU makefile that handles dependencies and graphics automatically.
  • Scientific Letter: Commerce mail software with export to TeX/LaTeX (homepage).
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Distributions

  • MiKTeX A popular and up-to-date TeX (including LaTeX) implementation for Windows.
  • ProTeXt "an easy-to-install TeX distribution for Windows, based on MiKTeX." Kept up-to-date.
  • OzTeX A popular and up-to-date TeX (including LaTeX, AMS-TeX, AMS-LaTeX and REVTeX) implementation for OS X and Mac OS.
  • teTeX One of the most popular distribution for Unix systems, developed primarily by Thomas Esser and included in many Linux distributions.
  • fpTeX A TeX distribution for Win32 systems, developed by Fabrice Popineau and based on teTeX.
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Add-on Packages

  • LaTeX-beamer Create sophisticated, structured presentations and slides using LaTeX.
  • powerdot Another very good class for presentations.
  • bussproofs.sty (and others) A package for setting natural deduction tree proofs.
  • Making a Resume in LaTeX A LaTeX template with instructions for making an easily-maintained resume.
  • ePiX A collection of batch-oriented utilities for *nix, creates mathematically accurate line figures, plots, and movies using easy-to-learn syntax.
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External links

Template:Wikibooks Template:Meta Template:Portalpar

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Community resources

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Periodicals

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General tutorials

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Advanced and in-depth topics

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Case-specific topics

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Reference materials

cs:LaTeX da:LaTeX de:LaTeX es:LaTeX fa:لاتک fr:LaTeX ko:LaTeX it:LaTeX he:LaTeX hu:LaTeX nl:LaTeX no:LaTeX ja:LaTeX oc:LaTeX pl:LaTeX pt:LaTeX ru:LaTeX fi:LaTeX sv:LaTeX tr:LaTeX zh:LaTeX

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