LaTeX Resources
Latex is a high-quality typesetting system, which is widely used for producing technical and scientific documentation. It is particularly widely used when mathematical formulas are involved. For example most of the nice mathematical formulas shown in Wikipedia articles (for example, see the entry on summations) are generated by a subset of Latex.
Here are some links to obtain more information about LaTeX. We plan to add more as the semester progresses. If you come across any others that you find valuable, please forward them to me. (Dave Mount)
- The LaTeX Project Home Page: This page has numerous links including Latex downloads and links to Latex related documentation and examples.
- The (Not So) Short Introduction to LaTeX2e: A good beginner's tutorial.
- Using Imported Graphics in LaTeX2e: Explains how to include graphics in your latex documents.
- TeXnicCenter": a free integrated development environment (IDE) for developing LaTeX-documents on Microsoft Windows (Windows 9x/ME, NT/2000/XP).
- MiKTeX: is an up-to-date TeX implementation for the Windows operating system. It is not very usable by itself, however. See proTeXt below for an program that will install all the various pieces needed to make latex useful.
LaTeX Installation
Installing tex/latex is somewhat complicated. Unlike Microsoft Word which is a single program, latex is one just piece of a multi-element software system, which would typically include tex and latex, an IDE for editting latex files, viewers for displaying the output of the latex process (which might in various formats, such as dvi, postscript, or pdf), and tools for downloading and installing the many different package extensions to latex. Here are some links to web pages that provide programs that help you download latex in a single step.
- proTeXt: An easy-to-install TeX distribution for Microsoft Windows. This will install tex and latex and some additional useful pieces of software, including TeXnicCenter, Ghostscript, and GSview.
- Live Tex: An easy way to get up and running with TeX. It provides a comprehensive TeX system with binaries for most flavors of Unix, including GNU/Linux, and also Windows.