LaTeX: from quick and dirty to style and finesse

Why LaTeX?

• It is arguably the premier typesetting package in the world. Knuth and Lamport have distilled for us the accumulated wisdom of generations of printers.
• It is simply the best package for documents containing mathematics.
• It is free on virtually every computer in the world.
• It is portable---stick to the standard commands and everyone can read and exchange documents.
• The source file is purely alphanumeric so it can be read by eye or posted by e-mail with no problems associated with different versions or binary files.
• LaTeX has the reputation of being hard, but in fact it is effectively the same as HTML!
• Weakness: it is not usually WYSIWIG.

Note that the "X" in LaTeX or TeX is pronounced as a hard sound as in the "ck" in "teck"

In a document of this size it is not possible to include everything that you might need to know, and if you intend to make extensive use of the LaTeX you should refer to a more complete reference. Instead this is an idiosyncratic introduction to the basic elements and philosophy of using LaTeX.

Other useful introductions and material may be found on the net.

Online is a fairly complete LaTeX2e reference (162k,html), suitable for browsing, searching or access via its index. Look now at the Overview to see common files generated by LaTeX.

Also see this Frequently Asked Questions from the UK.

Contents

1. A quick and dirty start
2. Environments
3. Cross referencing
4. More mathematics
5. Figures, tables and seminars
6. Write right for research
7. and possibly more, but not yet

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