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L A T EX course The essentials of modern L A T EX Silke - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
L A T EX course The essentials of modern L A T EX Silke - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
L A T EX course The essentials of modern L A T EX Silke Hofstra March 16, 2015 Table of Contents T EX T A How to get help with L EX A T How to setup L EX A What is L EX and L A short history of T EX? T A Why use L EX T A
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L
A
T EX according to Wikipedia
LaTeX (/ˈleɪtɛk/ LAY-tek or /ˈlɑːtɛk/ LAH-tek[1]) is a document preparation system and document markup language. […] LaTeX is not the name of a particular editing program, but refers to the encoding or tagging conventions that are used in LaTeX
- documents. Almost any editing program or word-processor may
be used to write LaTeX documents […] — Wikipedia
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But what is L
AT
EX?
L
A
T EX is a language that allows you to create documents in almost any text editor by focussing primarily on content and structure, not how it looks.
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Table of Contents
What is L
A
T EX Why use L
A
T EX? A short history of T EX and L
A
T EX How to setup L
AT
EX How to get help with L
A
T EX This course
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Trust
Source: XKCD 1301 ‘File Extensions’
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‘Ease’ of use
“Latex makes diffjcult things easy, and easy things very diffjcult” — Umij
Source: Marko Pinteric
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L
A
T EX vs MS Offjce (1/2)
L
A
T EX is better at
▶ High quality typography (kerning, hyphenation, etc) ▶ Separating content and formatting ▶ Mathematics ▶ Collaboration and version control (SVN, Git) ▶ Automation, programmability and consistency ▶ Compatibility and stability ▶ Keeping money in your pockets
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L
A
T EX vs MS Offjce (2/2)
Offjce is better at
▶ Showing you what you get immediately ▶ Checking spelling/grammar ▶ Being easy to learn ▶ Having everything in one ‘package’
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The perils of ‘what you see is what you get’ (1/2)
WYSIWYG allow the user to mix up form and function. Example: To emphasise something in Word, one makes it italic. In L
A
T EX one places emphasis. You can change the way emphasis behaves, not how italics behave.
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The perils of ‘what you see is what you get’ (2/2)
WYSIWYG allow the user to mix up form and function. Example: What is the difgerence between the following lines? What is the difgerence between the following lines?
\section*{New Chapter} \textbf{\Large New Chapter}
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Table of Contents
What is L
A
T EX Why use L
A
T EX? A short history of T EX and L
A
T EX How to setup L
AT
EX How to get help with L
A
T EX This course
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T EX
T EX (from Greek τέχνη – skill, art, technique) was designed by Donald E. Knuth in 1978. Knuth designed T EX because he was dissatisfjed with the ‘state of the art’ typesetting for the second volume of The Art of Computer Programming. A computer programmer by trade, he designed T EX to typeset decent documents and mathematics. Because Knuth was a scientist he designed T EX to be easy to use by other scientists and mathematicians. The current T EX version is 3.1415926 from 2008.
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L
A
T EX
In the early 1980’s Leslie Lamport designed L
A
T EX, a set of macros built on T EX to make it easier for users to focus on the content of documents. The current L
A
T EX version is L
AT
EX2𝜁. L
A
T EX 3 is still under development, but some features are available already.
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Table of Contents
What is L
A
T EX Why use L
A
T EX? A short history of T EX and L
A
T EX How to setup L
AT
EX How to get help with L
A
T EX This course
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Distributions
There are three main L
A
T EX distributions:
▶ T
EX Live (Unix / Linux / Windows)
▶ MacT
EX (Mac OSX)
▶ MikT
EX (Windows)
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Editors
▶ TeXworks ▶ TeXnicCenter ▶ TeXmaker ▶ TeXstudio ▶ Emacs with AUCTeX ▶ Vim LaTeX-suite
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Engines
▶ pdfL A
T EX
▶ XƎL A
T EX (L
AT
EX3)
▶ LuaL A
T EX (L
A
T EX3 + Lua)
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Table of Contents
What is L
A
T EX Why use L
A
T EX? A short history of T EX and L
A
T EX How to setup L
AT
EX How to get help with L
A
T EX This course
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Get Help
▶ The L A
T EX Wikibook
▶ The T
EX Stack Exchange
▶ This question on the T
EX Stack Exchange
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Table of Contents
What is L
A
T EX Why use L
A
T EX? A short history of T EX and L
A
T EX How to setup L
AT
EX How to get help with L
A
T EX This course
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