LaTeX is a text formatting system, useful for formatting documents. LaTeX is available under many platforms, including UNIX and DOS. Pictures and plots can be embedded into LaTeX documents very easily. For plots, the gnuplot program can be used to generate LaTeX output, which can then be included into the LaTeX document. For pictures, the xfig program can be used to draw a picture, which is then translated into LaTeX commands using the utility fig2dev. Documentation on gnuplot is available in the CEC (Fisher 201). Man pages have been installed for gnuplot, xfig, and fig2dev. Several books on LaTeX are available for your use. They are included in the bibliography.
Getting Started
The best way to think of LaTeX is as a programming language for typesetting. The idea is to describe your document so that the ``latex program'' can interpret to create a document which fits your needs. As with any other programming language, it is crucial that you follow the syntax, and type things in a manner that the latex program will understand.
To use LaTeX, create a file to contain LaTeX commands which ends in .tex. The first line in the file describes the style of the document.
A template which should be used to create all LaTeX files follows, where you
should change the style of the document to fit your needs. Available document
styles for LaTeX are listed in a table below. Once you have created a file,
for example, file1.tex, execute the command latex file1. This will,
if successful, generate a device independent file (.dvi), which can be either
previewed under X Windows, using xtex file1 or xdvi or it can be printed to a postscript
printer by typing dvips file1. These and other latex executables can be found in /usr/local/tex on machines running SunOS 4.1.3 and in /usr/local/tex/bin/sparc-solaris2.5 on those running Solaris 2.5.
\documentstyle{article}
% this is the preamble
\begin{document}
% this is where the content of the document belongs
\end{document}
% everything after the \end{document} is ignored
Document Styles
Quick Reference for LaTeX
Special Characters
LaTeX commands use the special symbols: # $ % & _ { }
In order to use any of these symbols, precede them with a backslash \.
The other special symbols are \ ^ ~. They are printed using the
verbatim environment.
Typefaces
Sizes of Text
You may either change the size of the text using point sizes, or relative sizes. To indicate point size 12, for example, the following is included in the first line. This formats the entire document using 12 point font.
\documentstyle[12pt]{article}
To use relative sizes, indicate how you would like the font scaled. Some examples are listed below.
This text is small, use \small.
This text is normalsize, use \normalsize.
This text is large, use \large.
This text is Large, use \Large.
This text is LARGE, use \LARGE.
This text is huge, use \huge.