TeX and LaTeX

The most powerful "typesetting" software in the world is TeX, created by mathematician / computer scientist Donald Knuth with the support of many others. Typesetting technical (especially mathematical) books has for centuries been the most challenging task for professional typesetters. Knuth studied the traditional rules for typesetting math, what constituted good typography, and (because the fonts of symbols that he needed really didn't exist) as much as he could about type design. All this, Knuth (with help) programmed into a system that takes care of all typesetting details in converting your text into a perfectly formatted document.

The defining feature of TeX is that it works from plain text files. You type only plain text -- just what you see on a keyboard (letters, digits, punctuation) -- and this is sufficient even for specifying margin/spacing information, italics/boldface instructions, Greek letters or characters with accents, and complicated mathematical formulae. This is possible because the characters # $ % ^ _ & \ { } have special non-literal meanings, as do TeX macros (which always start with a backslash). For example, here is how TeX interprets some simple macros to create formulae and special symbols:

3 \times 5	95 \pm 5	A = \pi r^2	\mu^{\alpha+3}
{\AE}schylus and Chlo\"{e}		\int_{s=0}^{\pi}\sqrt{\sin s}ds

The thousands of TeX macros tend to define primitive characters, symbols, and formatting instructions, but they also provide a way to define higher-level complex commands in terms of the primitive ones. LaTeX is a comprehensive set of such higher-level macros defined to make things as easy as possible for the user. In particular, LaTeX commands let the user indicate the type of document (article, report, book, or letter), font size and main options in the first few lines of instructions; this is sufficient for TeX to make all the correct formatting decisions for the rest of the document.

Many technical journals encourage submitted papers to be in the form of TeX. Some provide their own macro package, similar to LaTeX; for example, the American Mathematical Society provides AMSTeX for submissions to math journals.

On the C.U. campus, several individuals have contributed to a CU Thesis Class, which amounts to a 5^th type of document which will conform to the dissertation formatting requirements of the University of Colorado Graduate School.

All the above are available on the main C.U.Boulder central Unix systems, and on many other computers around campus. Most science/engineering departments will have a copy of a good LaTeX reference book, but if not, they are available at the bookstore. There is no way to make such a complex system ``easy'' for the beginner, but it is at least rational, and with a bit of practice anybody can learn to harness the power of LaTeX. (Don't waste time learning low-level TeX.) This web site provides handy reference material, information particular to the C.U. campus, and local contacts for your difficult LaTeX questions.

Another link: Why LaTeX?