.. Objectives .. ---------- .. At the end of this tutorial, you will .. 1. Get acquainted to LaTeX. .. #. Know why we prefer LaTeX? .. #. Know the advantages and disadvantages of typesetting documents .. using the LaTeX approach. .. #. Have a description, of a typical work flow; which uses LaTeX to typeset .. documents. .. #. Recognise and differenciate between LaTeX commands, LaTeX comments and .. special characters, spacing and actual document content. .. #. Create and compile a very simple LaTeX document. .. Prerequisites .. ------------- .. 1. Installing LaTeX .. Author : Harish Badrinath < harish [at] fossee [dot] in > Internal Reviewer : Kiran Isukapatla < kiran [at] fossee [dot] in > External Reviewer : Langauge Reviewer : Checklist OK? : 25-Feb-2012 Script ------ .. L1 {{{ Show the first slide containing title, name of the production team along with the logo of MHRD }}} .. R1 Hello Friends and welcome to the tutorial on 'Introduction to LaTeX'. .. L2 {{{ Show the "Objectives" slide }}} .. R2 At the end of this tutorial, you will 1. Get acquainted to LaTeX. #. Know why we prefer LaTeX? #. Know the advantages and disadvantages of typesetting documents using the LaTeX approach. #. Have a description of a typical work flow; which uses LaTeX to typeset documents. #. Recognize and differentiate between LaTeX commands, LaTeX comments and special characters, spacing and actual document content. #. Be able to create and compile a very simple LaTeX document. .. L3 {{{ Show the "Pre-requisite" slide }}} .. R3 Before beginning this tutorial, we would suggest having a working installation of LaTeX on your computer. You can do this by completing the tutorial on "Installing LaTeX". .. L4 {{{ Show the "Introduction" slide }}} .. R4 LaTeX began as TeX, a computer program originally created by Donald E. Knuth. Its was designed mainly to aid typesetting of text and mathematical formulae. It is a typesetting program that produces excellently typeset documents. Typesetting is placing text onto a page with all the style formatting defined, so that the content looks as intended. It is extensively used for producing high quality scientific and mathematical documents. It may also be used for producing other kinds of documents, ranging from simple one page articles to complete books. LaTeX is pronounced Lah-tech or Lay-tec. TeX is pronounced Tech. TeX is also the first syllable in the Greek word for technology. .. L5 {{{ Show the "Why LaTeX?" slide }}} .. R5 Why we prefer LaTeX? (a) LaTeX offers excellent visual quality. (b) Handles typesetting and lets you focus on content. (c) Makes writing complex math equation extremely simple. (d) It is also a standard used widely, especially by the scientific community. .. L6 {{{ Show the "Why LaTeX? ..." slide }}} .. R6 We can define LaTex as a document based markup language. This sentence is deceptively simple, as it reveals a lot about LaTex. We now break this sentence up as follows Mark-up — a system of annotating text, adding extra information to specify structure and presentation of text Document based markup - you don’t have to worry about each element individually. This is essentially a fancy way of saying,LaTeX handles typesetting and lets you focus on content. .. L7 {{{ Show the "Advantages of using LaTeX" slide }}} .. R7 Some of the advantages of using LaTeX approach to typesetting are (1) Easy availability of professionally crafted layouts. (2) Typesetting of mathematical formulae is supported in a convenient environment. (3) Typesetting for most cases can be done with very little learning curve using easy to use/understand commands, that only specify the logical structure of the document. (4) Presence of lots of add-on packages. (5) It encourages creation of well structured texts. .. L8 {{{ Show the "Disadvantages of using LaTeX" slide }}} .. R8 Some of the disadvantages of using LaTeX approach to typesetting is (1) Designing a whole new layout is difficult. (2) LaTeX is not a word processor, that is the document author is not expected to worry about presentation details like the size of font, for example. .. L9 {{{ Show the "LaTeX input file format" slide }}} .. R9 LaTeX input files are simple ASCII text files that are processed by a TeX processing engine. Next comes the question compiling LaTeX input files and viewing the output typeset document. The process is a little different from other markup languages like HTML. We compile ASCII text files into typeset files that are normally DVI,Postscript or PDF files. The latex command converts LaTeX input files into dvi files. We can view DVI files on Gnu/Linux using xdvi. Further DVI files can be converted either to a post script file, using the dvips command or to a PDF file using the dvipdfm command. The command pdflatex is used to convert LaTeX input files directly to pdf files. The resultant PDF files can be viewed using standard tools on most platforms (Eg: evince on Gnu/Linux). PDF file are also widely supported. .. L10 {{{ Show the "Commands,Comments&Special Characters" slide }}} .. R10 LaTeX, like most utilities in Linux, LaTeX is case sensitive. Commands begin with a backslash. LaTeX environments have a begin and end marker. The begin and end document commands, mark the beginning and the end of the content of the LaTeX document. The text in between the begin and end commands is typeset in the output document.Any content after \end{document} is ignored. The type of document that is being currently typeset in LaTex, is identified with the documentclass command. LaTeX then, typesets the document accordingly. All the commands in LaTeX begin with a \. An environment begins with a begin command and ends with an end command. So, as expected LaTeX ignores anything that is written after the \end{document} command. Essentially, anything written after the \end{document} command turns out to be a comment. But, how do we write comments with in the document. % is the character to indicate comments. Anything written after a % symbol in a line, is ignored. .. L11 {{{ Show the "Commands,Comments&Special Characters ..." slide }}} .. R11 But what if we wanted to insert the % symbol in the document? We can do so by escaping it with a \ (backslash). % is one of the many special characters in LaTeX. The others are, ~ # $ ^ & _ { } \. All of them, except the \ itself, can be inserted by escaping it with a \. To insert a \ in our document, we use the command \textbackslash. What would happen if we escape a \ with a \? A double backslash is actually another command. It inserts a new line in the typeset document. Normally LaTeX automatically spaces the given input optimally. But, sometimes we have to insert manual line breaks. The \\ command or \newline command is used to insert a newline in the output document. Line breaks in the input document, do not translate into line breaks in the output document. A single line break in the input document, doesn't cause any change in the output. A single empty line causes a change in paragraphs in the output. (Multiple empty lines are equivalent to a single empty line.) Similarly, multiple spaces are treated as a single space. .. L12 {{{ Show the "Typesetting a minimal document" slide }}} .. R12 Now, try to create a simple LaTeX document. Pause the tutorial and type the content shown on the screen in a text editor. Save the file as temp.tex .. L13 {{{continue from paused state}}} {{{ Show the "Compiling to DVI" slide }}} .. R13 Now we compile the commands in the LaTeX input file that is, temp.tex into a typeset file. The first alternative is to compile LaTeX input file into a DVI file. We use the latex command for this purpose. For compiling the LaTeX input file temp.tex into a DVI file, we use the following command latex temp.tex. The output file would be temp.dvi.On Gnu/Linux use a program like xdvi to view the output file. .. L14 {{{ Show the "Compiling to PDF" slide }}} .. R14 The other alternative is to create PDF files from LaTeX input files. We use the pdflatex command for this purpose. For compiling the LaTeX input file temp.tex into a PDF file, we use the following command pdflatex temp.tex The output file would be temp.pdf.On Gnu/Linux use a program like evince to view the output file. Please note that, throughout this course we shall be using pdflatex to compile our documents. .. L15 {{{ Show the "Summary" slide }}} .. R15 This brings us to the end of this tutorial. In this tutorial, we have learnt 1. About LaTeX. #. why we prefer LaTeX. #. About the advantages and disadvantages of typesetting documents using the LaTeX approach. #. A description, of a typical work flow; which uses LaTeX to typeset documents. #. The ability to recognize and differentiate between LaTeX commands, LaTeX comments and special characters, spacing and actual document content. #. Created and compiled a very simple LaTeX document. .. L16 {{{ Show the "Self assessment questions" slide }}} .. R16 Here are some self assessment questions for you to solve 1. Convert the temp.dvi created during the course of this tutorial to temp_1.ps using the dvips command. Verify that the two files indeed look the same. 2. Convert the temp.dvi created during the course of this tutorial to temp_1.pdf using the dvipdfm command. Verify that the two files indeed look the same. .. L17 {{{ Show the "Solutions" slide }}} .. R17 And the answers, 1. dvips -o temp_1.ps temp.dvi 2. dvipdfm -o temp_1.pdf temp.dvi .. L18 {{{ Show the "Thank you" slide }}} .. R18 Hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and found it useful. Thank you!