1. LATEX
B. R. Chandavarkar,
Wireless Information Networking Group (WiNG),
CSE Dept., NITK, Surathkal.

2. A document preparation system,
WYSIWYM,
Focus on the content not the format,
LaTeX is based on Donald E. Knuth's TeX typesetting language or certain extensions. LaTeX was first developed in 1985 by Leslie Lamport, and is now being maintained and developed by the LaTeX3 Project. 
Structure of the Latex documents:
\documentclass[ ]{ }
--- preamble ---
\begin{document}
--- body ----
\end{document}

3. TeX distributions
The set of programs that make possible to compile TEX and LATEX documents is called a TEX typesetting or a TEX distribution. There are many TEX distributions available for different operating systems:
MiKTeX for Windows
TeX Live for Linux and other UNIX-like systems
MacTeX redistribution of TeX Live for Mac OS X
teTeX for Linux and other UNIX-like systems, now is no longer actively maintained
proTeXt is based on MiKTeX

4. LaTeX editors
There are many advanced text editors specifically dedicated to LATEX for the most popular operating systems, some of them can be downloaded for free while others are proprietary software:
Open source: AUCTEX, GNU TeXmacs, Gummi, Kile, LaTeXila, MeWa, TeXShop, TeXnicCenter, Texmaker, TeXstudio, TeXworks
Freeware: LEd, WinShell
Proprietary/Shareware: Inlage, Scientific WorkPlace, WinEdt

5. LATEX Compilation File Flow

6. Example 1: Basic. tex file Example 2:
Example 1: Basic .tex file Example 2: .tex with title Example 3: Basic formatting – abstract, paragraphs & newlines Example 4: Comments Example 5: Fonts, Paragraph Example 6: Mathematical Expression Example 7: Mathematical Expression (Superscript & Subscript) Example 8: Fractions and Binomials Example 9: Aligning equations Example 10: Tables