Newbie Write & Edit (Latex)

[Ed Hill]

On Sun, 2004-04-04 at 11:28, paul.cour1 at verizon.net wrote:
> 
> Is Latex still used to some extent? 
> Was Latex a tool, a part of a typical Unix installation?
> Is it available via wide distribution today ???
> I am looking for practical advice, because I will
> now google for the keyword Latex ...


Hi Paul,

LaTeX is still very popular in academic environments because of its
excellent handling of mathematical markup.  Its also used as a
typesetting engine for other formats including SGML, XML, etc.

We use LaTeX for our main project's documentation:

  http://mitgcm.org/sealion/

which is available in PostScript, PDF, and HTML formats using the tools
available in the "teTeX" LaTeX distribution included in Red Hat and many
other major Linux distros.

If you'd like to get started with LaTeX I recommend:

 - Get a copy of Kopka & Daly's excellent book:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0321173856

 - The easiest way to get started with LaTeX is to find someone 
   else's document that has approximately the formatting you want 
   (eg. book, article, dissertation, letter, etc.) and then copy 
   all the "boilerplate" (general formatting commands) and modify 
   it for your content.  I've put a few of my LaTeX docs on-line 
   and invite others to copy the formatting:

     http://eddy.lcs.mit.edu/LaTeX_examples/

   (*NO* promises that my LaTeX-isms are the "correct" or "best" 
   way to do anything!)

 - See http://cpan.org/ and Google for lots more examples

Good luck and happy TeX-ing!
Ed

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
office:  MIT Dept. of EAPS;  Room 54-1424;  77 Massachusetts Ave.
            Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
email:   eh3 at mit.edu,  ed at eh3.com
URL:     http://web.mit.edu/eh3/
phone:   617-253-0098
fax:     617-253-4464
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