Introduction
This book originally accompanied a 2-day course on using the LATEX typesetting system. It has been extensively revised and updated and can now be used for self-study or in the classroom. It is aimed at users of Linux, Macintosh, or Microsoft Windows but it can be used with LATEX systems on any platform, including other Unix workstations, mainframes, and even your Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).
Who needs this book?
The audience for the original training course was assumed to be computer-literate and composed of professional, business, academic, technical, or administrative computer users. The readers of the book (you) are mostly assumed to be in a similar position, but may also come from many other backgrounds, including hobbyists, students, and just people interested in quality typesetting. You are expected to have one or more of the following or similar objectives:
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producing typesetter-quality formatting;
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formatting long, complex, highly-structured, repetitive, or automatically-generated documents;1
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saving time and effort by automating common tasks;
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achieving or maintaining your independence from specific makes or models of proprietary hardware, software, or file formats (portability);
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using Open Source software (free of restrictions, sometimes also free of charge).
Skills needed
LATEX is a very easy system to learn, and requires no specialist knowledge, although literacy and some familiarity with the publishing process is useful. It is, however, assumed that you are completely fluent and familiar with using your computer before you start. Specifically, effective use of this document requires that you already know and understand the following very thoroughly:
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how to use a good plain-text editor (not a wordprocessor like OpenOffice, WordPerfect, or Microsoft Word, and not a toy like Microsoft Notepad);
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where to find all 95 of the printable ASCII characters on your keyboard and what they mean, and how to type accents and symbols, if you use them;
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how to create, open, save, close, rename, move, and delete files and folders (directories);
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how to use a Web browser and/or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) program to download and save files from the Internet;
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how to uncompress and unwrap (unzip or detar) downloaded files.
If you don't know how to do these things yet, it's important to go and learn them first. Trying to become familiar with the fundamentals of using a computer at the same time as learning LATEX is not likely to be as effective as doing them in order.
These are not specialist skills — they are all included in the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) and the relevant sections of the ECDL syllabus are noted in the margin above, so they are well within the capability of anyone who uses a computer.
Objectives of this book
By the end of this book, you should be able to undertake the following tasks:
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use a plain-text editor to create and maintain your documents;
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add LATEX markup to identify your document structure and formatting requirements;
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typeset LATEX documents, correct simple formatting errors, and display or print the results;
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identify, install, and use additional packages (using CTAN for downloading where necessary);
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recognise the limitations of procedural markup systems and choose appropriate generic markup methods where appropriate.
Synopsis
The original course covered the following topics as separate sessions, which are represented in the book as chapters:
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Where to get and how to install LATEX (teTEX, fpTEX, or proTEXt from the TEX Collection disks);
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How to type LATEX documents: using an editor to create files (half a dozen editors for LATEX);
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Basic structures (the Document Class Declaration and its layout options; the document environment with sections and paragraphs);
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Typesetting, viewing, and printing;
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The use of packages and CTAN to adapt formatting using standard tools;
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Other document structures (lists, tables, figures, images, and verbatim text);
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Textual tools (footnotes, marginal notes, cross-references, indexes and glossaries, and bibliographic citations);
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Typographic considerations (white-space and typefaces; inline markup and font changes; extra font installation and automation);
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Programmability and automation (macros and modifying LATEX's behaviour);
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Conversion and compatibility with other systems (XML, Word, etc.).
A few changes have been made in the transition to printed and online form, but the basic structure is the same, and the document functions as a workbook for the course as well as a standalone self-teaching guide.
Where's the math?
It is important to note that the document does not cover mathematical typesetting, complex tabular material, the design of large-scale macros and document classes, or the finer points of typography or typographic design, although it does refer to these topics in passing on a few occasions.
There are several other guides, introductions, and ‘get-started’ documents on the Web and on CTAN which cover these topics and more. Among the more popular are:
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Getting Started with TEX, LATEX, and friends, where all beginners should start;
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The (Not So) Short Guide to LATEXε: LATEXε in 131 Minutes is a good beginner's tutorial;
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A Gentle Introduction to TEX: A Manual for Self-Study is a classic tutorial on Plain TEX;
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Using imported graphics in LATEXε shows you how to do (almost) anything with graphics: side-by-side, rotated, etc.;
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Short Math Guide for LATEX gets you started with the American Math Society's powerful packages;
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A comprehensive list of symbols in TEX shows over 2,500 symbols available.
This list was taken from the CTAN search page. There are also lots of books published about TEX and LATEX: the most important of these for users of this document are listed in the last paragraph in the Foreword.
Availability of LATEX systems
Because the TEX program (the ‘engine’ which actually does the typesetting) is separate from whichever editor you choose, TEX-based systems are available in a variety of different modes using different interfaces, depending on how you want to use them.
Graphical interface
The normal way to run LATEX is to use a toolbar button (icon), a menu item, or a keystroke in your editor. Click on it and your document gets saved and typeset. All the other features of LATEX systems (the typeset display, spellchecker, related programs like makeindex and BIBTEX) are run the same way. This works both in a normal Graphical User Interface (GUI) as well as in text-only interfaces.
In the popular LATEX editors like Emacs, TEXshell, TEXnicCenter, WinShell, or WinEdt, a record of the typesetting process is shown in an adjoining window so that you can see the progress of pages being typeset, and any errors or warnings that may occur.2
Command-line interface
However, the graphical interface
is useless if you want to run LATEX unattended, as part of an
automated system, perhaps in a web server or e-commerce
environment, where there is no direct connection between
user and program. The underlying TEX engine is in fact
a Command-Line Interface (CLI) program,
that is, it is used as a
‘console’ program which you run from
a standard Unix or Mac terminal or shell window (or from an
MS-DOS command window in Microsoft Windows systems). You
type the command
latex followed by the name of your
document file (see in section 4.1.2 for an example).
Commands like these let you run LATEX in an automated environment like a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) script on a web server or a batch file on a document system. All the popular distributions for Unix and Windows, both free and commercial, include this interface as standard (teTEX, fpTEX, MiKTEX, proTEXt, PC-TEX, TrueTEX, etc.).
Typeset displays
LATEX usually displays your typeset results in a separate window, redisplayed automatically every time the document is reprocessed, because the typesetting is done separately from the editing. Some systems, however, can format the typesetting while you type, at the expense of some flexibility.
- Asynchronous typographic displays
This method is called an asynchronous typographic display because the typeset window only updates after you have typed something and reprocessed it, not while you are still typing, as it would with a wordprocessor.3
- Synchronous typographic displays
Some distributions of LATEX offer a synchronous typographic interface. In these, you type directly into the typographic display, as with a wordprocessor. Three popular examples are Textures, Scientific Word, and VTEX (see table below). At least one free version (LYX, see Figure 2.1 in section 2.3) offers a similar interface.
With a synchronous display you get Instant Textual Gratification™, but your level of control is restricted to that of the GUI you use, which cannot provide access to everything that LATEX can do. For complete control of the formatting you may still need access to your normal source (input) file in the same way as for asynchronous implementations.
- Near-synchronous displays
There are several other methods available free for Unix and some other systems for close-to-synchronous updates of the typeset display (including Jonathan Fine's Instant Preview and the TEX daemon), and for embedding typographic fragments from the typeset display back into the editor window (David Kastrup's preview-latex package).
Commercial distributions
Whatever method you choose, the TEX Collection CD and CTAN are not the only source of software. The vendors listed in Table offer excellent commercial implementations of TEX and LATEX, and if you are in a position where their enhanced support and additional features are of benefit, I urge you to support them. In most cases their companies, founders, and staff have been good friends of the TEX and LATEX communities for many years.
| Product | Platform | Company | URI |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCTEX | MS-Windows | Personal TEX, Inc | www.pctex.com/ |
| TrueTEX | MS-Windows | True TEX | truetex.com/ |
| Textures | Apple Mac | Blue Sky Research | www.bluesky.com/ |
| Scientific Word | MS-Windows | Mackichan Software | www.mackichan.com/ |
| VTEX | MS-Windows, Linux, OS/2 | MicroPress, Inc | www.micropress-inc.com/ |
Production note
This document is written and maintained in XML, using a customized version of the DocBook DTD. Conversions were made to HTML and LATEX using XSLT scripts and Michael Kay's Saxon processor.
The complete source, with all ancillary files, is available online at http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/beginlatex/src/ but if you want to try processing it yourself you must install Java (from Sun, IBM, or a number of others) and Saxon (from http://saxon.sourceforge.net/), in addition to LATEX.
This document is published under the terms and conditions of the GNU Free Documentation License. Details are in this appendix.
Symbols and conventions
The following typographic notations are used:
| Notation | Meaning |
|---|---|
\command |
Control sequences which perform an
action, e.g. \newpage |
| \length | Control sequences which store a dimension (measurement in units), e.g. \parskip |
| counter | Values used for counting (whole numbers, as opposed to measuring in units), e.g. secnumdepth |
| term | Defining instance of a new term |
| environment | A LATEX formatting environment |
| package | A LATEX package (available from CTAN) |
| product | Program or product name |
typewriter type |
Examples of source code (stuff you type) |
| mybook or value | Mnemonic examples of things you have to supply real-life values for |
| x | A key on your keyboard |
| Ctrl–x | Two keys pressed together |
| Esc q | Two keys pressed one after another |
| Submit | On-screen button to click |
| → | Drop-down menu with items |
Examples of longer fragments of input are shown with a border round them. Where necessary, the formatted output is shown immediately beneath. Warnings are shown with a shaded background. Exercises are shown with a double border.
