Latex

Introduction

LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system; it includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation. It is a mark-up language.

Documentation

See:
https://www.latex-project.org/

Initialisation

If you are happy to use the texlive 2011 version, which is the default on SL6, then just type 'latex' or 'pdflatex' followed by the name of your document ommitting the '.tex' suffix. If you want a more recent version, eg to create the 2016 exam papers or to use fonts not available in the older distribution, then run the following command:

setenv PATH /usr/local/texlive/2016/bin/x86_64-linux:${PATH}

Version

We currently have texlive 2011 and texlive 2016 distributions.

Testing

Does it compile a document?

Usage

To compile a file called simple.tex to a PDF file type:

pdflatex simple

or to convert a file to the .dvi format, type:

latex simple

Remember to drop the .tex suffix.

Conversion Programs

You can use dvips or dvipdf to convert dvi format latex files to Postscript or PDF files.

Author and References

Leslie Lamport was the initial developer of Latex, we have several copies of his book: LATEX: a Document Preparation System : User's Guide and Reference Manual.

Related Software

Bibtex (reference manager), lyx (Wysiwig Latex editor), wvLatex (word to latex) converter...

Rhys Morris

Last modified: Monday, 26 September 2016