The basics of LaTeX tool

1. S. SRIKRISHNAN
1Theory of LaTeX

2.  A documentation preparation system
 Document markup language
 Here, what you see, is what you mean (WYSIWYM) as
compared to what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG)
 TeX and LaTeX
 TeX: All about formatting
 LaTeX: All about content
 Not a word processor!
2Theory of LaTeX

3.  Complex for large documents
 Time consuming
 Context switch between formatting and content
3Theory of LaTeX

4.  “Separate what changes from what remains the same”
 What remains the same – The formatting information
(Template, as we call it!)
 What changes – The content of the document
 Famous example – HTML – CSS separation
 Why not apply the same for document preparation?
 Separate the content of the document from the styling
information
4Theory of LaTeX

5.  It applies the design principle to solve the document
preparation problem
 What changes – The content; place this is in .tex file
 What is constant – The styling information place this
in .cls file
5Theory of LaTeX
Styling Content Document
Separation of concerns

6.  Predefined environments – avoids rework
 Programmability
 Justification and hyphenation
 Ligatures
 Kerning
6Theory of LaTeX

7. 7Theory of LaTeX

8. Word InDesign pdfLaTeX
Number of
hyphenations
9 10 4
SD of IWS (pt) 2.26 1.94 1.42
Maximum IWS
(pt)
14.4 13.2 9.0
Number of lines
with IWS > 9pt
5 2 0
8Theory of LaTeX

9. 9Theory of LaTeX

10. .tex + libs
• Source code containing the author’s work
.dvi
• Device independent file – too universal
.aux
• By product file, used by the compiler to resolve forward references
.log
• Logs the compilation process - errors
.ps
• A printable PostScript file obtained from dvi file
.pdf
• Something that we have been waiting for – a portable document format
10Theory of LaTeX

11. “LaTeX makes life simple”
11Theory of LaTeX

12.  http://www.zinktypografie.nl/comparison.pdf
 http://www.zinktypografie.nl/latex.php?lang=en
 http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/110133/visual-
comparison-between-latex-and-word-output-
hyphenation-typesetting-ligat
12Theory of LaTeX

13. 13Theory of LaTeX