New to LaTeX?
Are you ready to say goodbye to the limitations of "what you see is what you get" word processors and experience the power of reliable and professional typesetting? Then let's go together!
Introduction to LaTeX
LaTeX, shortcut for Lamport TEX, which is pronounced either lay-tek or lah-tek, is a document markup language used to create professional quality documents.
LaTeX is a powerful typesetting system that is widely used in the scientific and academic community for creating high-quality documents. It is particularly useful for documents that contain a lot of mathematical equations and technical content, but also can be used for any kind of document, from simple letters to complex books and articles.
LaTeX allows you to focus on the content of your document, leaving the formatting and typesetting to the program, making it a powerful tool for creating professional-looking documents.
Additionally, LaTeX is highly customizable, with a large number of packages and templates available, making it easy to create documents that meet the specific requirements of your field or organization. LaTeX also has a large and active community, so you can find help and support when you need it.
Whether you are a student, researcher, or professional, it's a valuable tool to have in your toolbox for creating high-quality documents.
LaTeX history
The origin of LaTeX can be traced back to TEX, a program created by Donald Knuth in 1978. Knuth, a computer scientist, was dissatisfied with the errors made by publishers during the typesetting of his work. He aimed to develop a user-friendly typesetting program that was particularly useful for documents with mathematical formulas, and made it freely accessible to everyone. Thus, TEX was born.
Although TEX is a very powerful program, it primarily focuses on the small details of typesetting. A mathematician and computer scientist by the name of Leslie Lamport wrote a variant of TEX called LaTeX that focuses on document structure rather than such details. It provided a higher-level interface to TeX, making it easier to create documents without having to write the underlying TeX code.
Over the years, LaTeX has continued to evolve and improve, with new packages and features being added to the system. Today, it is widely used in the scientific and academic community for creating high-quality documents and has a large and active community of users and developers.
Why to learn LaTeX?
The following table shows a comparative analysis between MS Word and LaTeX:
| LaTeX | MS Word |
|---|---|
| LaTeX is for technical writing | MS Word if for general purpose documentation |
| LaTeX and all its packages are free to use | MS Word is not free |
| LaTeX output is a pdf, no issues of compatibility | MS Word different versions have compatibility issues |
| LaTeX has specified templates for an article, book and report etc. | MS Word has no such templates |
| LaTeX learning seems to be difficult at first | MS Word seems to be an easy learning project |
| LaTeX document has a perfect look | MS Word document lacks such a look in a technical document |
| LaTeX is painful at the beginning, but once learnt, one can't live without it | MS Word is not having such addiction |
How does it work?
By utilizing plain text and commands that detail the structure and purpose of your document, you can create a clean and organized final product. The LaTeX program takes your plain text and commands, and through its processing, generates a polished and professional-looking document.
To begin, we will look at the most basic working sample:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
This is my \textbf{first} \textit{document} prepared in \underline{\LaTeX}.
\end{document}
This sample generates the following output:
Dive into LaTeX
If you're new to LaTeX, it can be overwhelming to try to learn everything at once. That's why we've created the LaTeX Quickstart guide, to help you get up and running with the basics of LaTeX as quickly and easily as possible. It's a great resource for anyone who wants to start using LaTeX but isn't sure where to begin.
So, take the first step and dive into the Quickstart guide.