LaTeX is a system of typesetting mathematical notation. You enter LaTeX markup language in a plain text file, and then typeset it using the program pdflatex. You can do this by hand (invoking pdflatex from a command line) but all three major platforms have GUI LaTeX editors available that will do syntax coloring on your LaTeX document and also invoke the typesetter for you. We highly recommend that you get a GUI editor; it will make your life less painful. If you really do not enjoy using LaTeX there are Alternatives

Getting LaTeX Installed

On Windows

You'll need to first install a LaTeX distribution. The de facto Windows standard is MiKTeX -- the website has installation instructions.

If the homepage is down you can get it from here

You have a few choices for a GUI editor:

• TeXnic Center, a GUI editor which will allow you to click on the mathematical symbol, list environment, code environment, font size, etc., that you want.
• WinEdt is another program you may want to consider.
• Vim is a popular editor that includes syntax coloring for LaTeX as well as many programming languages.
• TeXlipse is a plugin that adds LaTeX support to Eclipse. It includes highlighting, completion, auto-build, etc.

On Mac OS X

Here are some options.

• TeXShop is a good GUI editor. The site has a link to an installer for LaTeX itself. The installer handles downloading and installing all the necessary packages.
• Another good way of using LaTex on a Mac is to use TextMate, the de-facto code editor for the Mac platform. It's not free but if you are doing any sort of coding on a Mac, it's well worth the money. In order to use TextMate with LaTeX, you will also need a TeX distribution. The most common used one is MacTex. It's about 700 MBs so make sure you are on a wired network before starting downloading it. After installing MacTex and TextMate, editing and printing out to PDF is a matter of pressing command + R.
• Finally, another option for using LaTeX on a Mac is TexLive.

On Linux

Texmaker is a good GUI editor (it also works on Mac OS X and Windows). In addition to Texmaker, you'll have to install a version of LaTeX itself on your system if it didn't come pre-installed. We recommend using whatever package manager your distro uses (e.g. Synaptic on Ubuntu, Portage on Gentoo, apt-get on Debian, etc.), to ensure that you get all the packages that LaTeX depends on installed correctly.

Here's some distro/environment/text editor specific advice:

• On Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) getting Texmaker up and running is very easy. You just need to install the following packages (and all of their dependencies) from the universe repositories: texlive, texmaker, gv.
• For Gentoo users, the recommended LaTeX distribution is TeTeX, and a setup guide can be found here. The guide is Gentoo specific, but does also contain some good general examples, so if you're having trouble, it wouldn't be a bad read. Texmaker also works great on Gentoo. The only thing needed before emerging is to unmask qt and update qt4.
• For folk who use emacs, there is the AUCTeX mode, which greatly simplifies the process. It can be found here, but may be on your distribution's package manager as well.
• For KDE users, Kile is yet another good LaTeX editing environment.

Quick Start

We've created a homework template file that you can use (replete with examples too.) Here is an example of what it looks like; the LaTeX source for the template is available here, with the extension changed to txt for internet viewing

Some basic things to keep in mind about LaTeX:

• It ignores spacing; use "\\" for a line break, or hit enter twice for a new paragraph.
• You must surround math with dollar signs, e.g. $2^n$. 2^n in the middle of text is an error.
• LaTeX always interprets ' and " as closing quotes. You must use ` or `` as opening quotes for them to render correctly in your pdf.

Writing LaTeX Markup

A good reference for a lot of LaTeX symbols. (PDF)

Under construction.

-- OwenYamauchi? - 13 Jan 2007

Inserting Images into LaTeX

* See http://amath.colorado.edu/documentation/LaTeX/reference/figures.html

Example latex file with images here, with the extension changed to txt for internet viewing. To compile you will also need luis.jpg and dfa.png in the same directory and you will need to run the command "pdflatex".

A piece of letter paper, with LaTeX'ed margins, is about 150mm wide.

LaTeX Resources

Here are some useful resources when using LaTeX:

• http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/LaTeX/AoPS_L_GuideSym.php - List of Symbols
• http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/LaTeX/AoPS_L_GuideCommands.php - List of Commands
• http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf - "The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e", a definitive guide to LaTeX typesetting
• http://www.ams.org/tex/amslatex.html - Guides and documentation on the AMS extension to LaTeX; very useful for relatively obscure notation