“Many people discover LaTeX after years of struggling with wordprocessors and desktop publishing systems, and are amazed to find that TeX has been around for over 25 years and they hadn’t heard of it.”
Peter Flynn
LaTeX is a free document preparation system that enables you to create beautifully typeset pages. It implements a set of commands designed to control TeX, the typesetting engine developed by Donald E Knuth.
LaTeX stores the information about your documents as plain text. While this avoids the risk of vendor lock-in, it also ensures that your documents will still be editable twenty years from now.
LaTeX processes plain text data and, with pdfTeX working in the background, generates PDF output of the highest typographic quality—perfect for viewing on-screen or printing on paper.
LaTeX runs on many platforms and is included as standard with most Linux distributions. Ready-to-run LaTeX systems are also available for Windows and Mac OS X.
MiKTeX
MiKTeX is LaTeX for Windows. It features easy package management and a wizard that helps you to keep your MiKTeX system up-to-date.
www.miktex.org
MacTeX
MacTeX for Mac OS X allows you to install a fully functional LaTeX system with only a few clicks of the mouse button.
www.tug.org
Articles
LaTeX vs MS Word
Why even bother with LaTeX? Andrew Roberts explains why learning LaTeX might be worth the hassle after all.
www.andy-roberts.net
Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient
“The word processor is a stupid and inefficient tool for preparing text for communication with others.” Allin Cottrell outlines the comparative benefits of using LaTeX.
www.ecn.wfu.edu
LaTeX: It’s Not Just for Academia
“Most of us have used word processors for so long we have ignored other writing tools that offer real benefits.” Let Kevin O’Malley take you on a tour of LaTeX for Mac OS X.
www.macdevcenter.com Part 1, Part 2
Editors
LaTeX typesets your text, but you are still left with the task of writing. This can be achieved using just about any text editor, but TexShop and Kile are my personal favourites.
TeXShop
TeXShop provides a polished interface for using LaTeX on the Macintosh. It has the true look-and-feel of a Mac OS X application.
www.uoregon.edu/~koch/
Kile
Kile is a user friendly text editor that supports the writing of LaTeX documents with many unique and useful functions. It is intended for systems running the K Desktop Environment.
kile.sourceforge.net
WinShell
WinShell is a free text editor for working with LaTeX. It does syntax highlighting and offers a host of user-configurable options.
www.winshell.de
Documentation
The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN) keeps a number of useful documents available for online-reading.
The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX
Tobias Oetiker teaches you how to write texts so that they can be processed by LaTeX. The scope of this introduction is sufficient to cover most applications of LaTeX.
www.ctan.org (PDF file, 2.2 Mb)
Formatting Information
Formatting Information is a beginner’s guide to typesetting with LaTeX. Expertly written by Peter Flynn, this document does not assume any prior knowledge.
www.tex.ac.uk
LaTeX Primer
Based on a set of tutorials, the Indian TeX Users Group aims this document straight at the novice user. The LaTeX Primer is not currently available on CTAN.
sarovar.org (PDF file, 928 kb)
Tips & Tricks
Manually Adding to the Table of Contents
If you are writing a report and want the bibliography to appear in the table of contents, use the command \addcontentsline at the beginning of your bibliography:
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\protect\numberline{ }Bibliography}
If you want to list the abstract without any numbering, combine \addcontentsline with the command \chapter* at the beginning of your abstract:
\chapter*{Abstract}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\protect\numberline{ }Abstract}
Resources
Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List
Scott Pakin’s Comprehensive LaTeX Symbols List indexes 2826
symbols that are currently available in LaTeX.
www.ctan.org (PDF file, 2.4 Mb)
Publications
PracTeX Journal
The PracTeX Journal is the online journal of the TeX Users Group. It provides relevant information regarding the use of LaTeX.
www.tug.org/pracjourn/
TUGboat
TUGboat is the members’ journal of the TeX Users Group. Articles are posted online one year after they were first published and distributed to the TUG members.
www.tug.org/tugboat/
Help
comp.text.tex
A newsgroup dedicated to all things LaTeX. If you have got a question related to LaTeX, this is the place to ask.
groups.google.com