1 LaTeX Introduction Wenguang Wang Department of Computer Science University of Saskatchewan February 28, 2000

2 What is LaTeX How to pronounce LaTeX? (Lah-tek, or Lay-tek) A typesetting program, not a word-processor Macros of TeX (Donald E. Knuth) Current version LaTeX2  Designed for producing beautiful books, thesises, papers, articles... De facto standard for writing academic papers

3 Why LaTeX, not Word? Professional result Platform, version independent (Unix, Windows…) Pre-set standard formats (for paper, thesis…) Bibliography management Fast, professional math equations typesetting Free available The commands are easy to learn Never crash, never lose your file Can compile very big books (unless your document is more than 70,000 pages!)

4 Disadvantages You need other software (xfig) for pictures (Word picture can be used in LaTeX) Spelling/grammar checking is not as convenient as those in MS Word (emacs+ispell is good) Not WYSIWYG (try klyx and lyx on /grad/wew036/bin) Remember some commands Not straightforward for creating complex tables Not integrated with other MS Office products

5 Where to get LaTeX? Unix: –Skorpio, buzz, all ultra* machines in our department Windows –MikTeX –WinShell, a free LaTeX editor –Emacs for Windows, ispell for Windows Where to get help? newsgroup comp.text.tex –Introduction and tips for LaTeX

6 How To Run LaTeX Editemacs myfile.tex Compilelatex myfile F5 (WinShell) View the dvi filexdvi myfile (UNIX) F7 (WinShell) yap myfile (Windows) Dvi --> PostScriptdvips myfile F8 (WinShell) View PostScriptgv myfile (UNIX) F9 (WinShell)Use gsview (Windows)

7 BibTeX--Bibliography Management Bibliography database file mybib.bib Command \cite{biblabel} How to compile –latex myfile –bibtex myfile –latex myfile (may need to run twice) “.bib” file template (see my home page) Two bibliography servers (see my home page) –Powerful search engines –BibTeX file included

8 Spell checking by emacs+ispell Edit  Spell  Check Buffer Edit  Spell  Continue Check Commands: –Space: keep unchanged –a: accept this word for this session –i:insert to my directory – :replace the word –x:exit spell checking

9 LaTeX Skeleton % my first LaTeX file \documentclass{article} % preamble \usepackage{graphicx} \begin{document} \section{This is a section} \subsection{This is a subsection} First paragraph is here. Second paragraph is here. \end{document}

10 Now let’s learn by samples We concentrate on what you can do, not how do you do.

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12 Thank you! For more details, check my home page:

13 How to run LaTeX latex myfile xdvi myfile (UNIX) Edit myfile Resolve cross- reference Resolve compile error yap myfile (Windows) myfile.tex myfile.dvi dvips myfile myfile.ps print