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OctOber 2008
79
How To
so, we can concentrate on the content o the document andleave the specifc ormatting details to the sotware. At frst, I was totally surprised that we needed to writecode (like we do in programming) to create documents,and LaTeX can be slightly intimidating in the beginning.It is similar to the experience I had with the vi editor: Iwas used to programming with interactive editing and atfrst I was surprised that there were two dierent modesthat I had to work with. Once I got used to vi (or vim) orprogramming, I didn’t like anything else, though it tooktime to learn the commands and get used to it. Similarly, Iound it surprising that I should write code or LaTeX, butthen ater using it or some time, I’ve got used to it andnow I only enjoy writing in it.
Why LaTeX?
The answer is simple: i you want to write documentsthat just look great then the best option is to use LaTeX.Sometime, you’ll be orced to learn LaTeX. I, or instance, you’re doing your M. Tech or PhD and you want to writea paper or thesis, more likely than not, you’ll be orced tocreate your document in LaTeX. For some niche domains likemathematics, physics or chemistry where lots o symbols,complex equations, tables and cross-reerences are involved,there is rarely any choice but to use LaTeX. Although mostlyused in academic circles and in commercial publishing, don’tunderestimate the popularity and wide use o LaTeX—evennovels and short stories are occasionally written using LaTeX!Those who don’t care much about writing good-lookingdocuments—I call them ‘impatient’ writers—and those notrom computer science or academic background, preer usinginteractive word processors. Novices/beginners who don’twant to write LaTeX code can use interactive documentprocessors that create LaTeX output such as LyX. Butremember: i you want to make the best out o LaTeX, writingcode is the best way to go.It’s best to show the dierence visually. Just check outFigures 1 and 2: the document is written in MS Word in theormer, while the other is generated with LaTeX. Thosewho don’t know anything about typesetting can also fndminute dierences between two documents: the spacingbetween the words, how italics look, how the superscript andsubscript symbols look, how the deault settings look (thesetwo documents were written with deault settings on—andno, in MS Word, the bold ace was not enabled or the text,but it looks dark; so to dierentiate the title, I’ve used boldthere). To avoid bias, I’ve used the same onts—or MS Word,I used the deault Times New Roman ont; or LaTeX I’veused the
pslatex
package that replaces the deault computermodern onts with PostScript onts.
LaTeX advantages
The frst and oremost is the
quality of output
. In myexperience, LaTeX produces the best quality output and Iwould recommend you experience it yoursel. Avoid rustrations in creating large documents. Anyonewith experience in using sotware like MS Word or largedocuments such as a book will understand how rustratingit is to work with a word-processor or a long time to getormatting, indexing, cross-reerencing, etc, correct andconsistent. LaTeX is very convenient to use in medium- tolarge-size documents that are complex. In my experience, orshort documents such as memos or letters that we want toget done with quickly, it is not much use.The next point is
availability
. LaTeX code is portable: you can create a LaTeX document and use in any platorm.It is available rom AmigaOS, Mac OSX, Linux and Windows.This advantage is not available in many proprietary ormatssuch as the
.doc
ormat. Lots o ree and open sourcesotware is available. Since it is used widely, supporting tools,documentation and help is available.Next in line is the
choice of output formats
. LaTeX isalso useul or creating a wide range o document outputormats. It is enough to write a LaTeX document (a textfle) and, with that, we can create the document in almostany ormat that we usually use, including
.ps
,
.doc
,
.html
and
.pdf
ormats. So we can just keep the text fle andgenerate the desired output ormat in the given platorm,
Figure 1: Default text rendering in MS Word
Short History of L
A
TEX
September 8, 2008
For those who keep wondering what TEX or L
A
TEX is and why it wasdeveloped, here is a short history.
Donald E Knuth
, when he was working on his monumental book
The Art of Programming
was not happy with the type-setting for his book. So hecreated a type-setting system that would let him concentrate on the contentof the book rather than getting the type-setting software distracting andgetting him worried about formatting the output. For example, instead of doing formatting for a quotation every time with center aligned and extraborder from the page, with different font, italicized, surrounded with doublequote etc., he wanted just to say - this is a quote - and wanted the typesettingsystem to take care of formatting it accordingly. He designed TEX to do that.However, TEX was still low level and difficult for beginners to use. So,
LeslieLamport
created a set of high level TEXmacros and made the common tasks- such as creating table of contents - easier. Now-a-days, most of the peopleuse L
A
TEX instead TEX.
Figure 2: Default text rendering in document generated using LaTeX
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