Maths projects

LaTeX is the friendly face of TeX, a powerful mathematical typesetting engine. You can use it to produce book-quality printed technical material without delving into the details of TeX itself.

LaTeX builds on TeX by providing standard document layouts, dealing automatically with labels and cross-references, and making it easy to include tables and graphics.

In practice you type file.tex of plain text, and include mark-up codes for headings, mathematics, figures, etc. This is the "source" that is input to LaTeX. The output is a file holding viewable and printable pages.

Do everything -- edit your source, run LaTeX, view and print the results -- using a dedicated editor (Integrated Development Environment or IDE) -- see below.

• LaTeX versus Word: 1 / 2 / 3.

In case the departmental LaTeX briefing is not sufficient, you may be interested in the CIS course IT79: Introduction to LaTeX.

Slides of the LaTeX briefing on October 17th

• The LaTeX project.
• LaTeX at Wikipedia.
• The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN)
• A short introduction to LaTeX.
• The LaTeX Wikibook.
• FAQs: TeX FAQ online and a cool visual one.
• ITS info: LaTeX and MikTeX.

• The LaTeX Companion and the Graphics Companion are available in CM311.

• Linux: if it is not already installed, install "tetex" or "texlive"; front-ends include Kile and LyX
• Mac OSX: MacTeX includes an IDE called TeXShop.
• Windows: MikTeX, perhaps in combination with the graphical front-end TeXnicCenter

• Quick overview example (chapters, figures, hyperlinks, maths, bibliography, lists, ...)
• How to make partially transparent boxes

• Minimal example
• Report example
• Poster example
• Presentation example