What is LaTeX?

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• What does LaTeX do?

Objectives

• Explain what LaTeX is

• Explain how it differs from a wordprocessor

What is LaTeX?

LaTeX (pronounced Laytec) is a document preparation and typesetting system that has been around since the early 1980s. Unlike a traditional word processor such as Microsoft Word or Libreoffice it works by using a markup language and converting this into a document file, typically a PDF. Where exactly things appear on the page is determined by LaTeX itself leaving you to focus on the content of your document. Like with a wordprocessor you can create chapters, sections and subsections, set the style of certain parts of the text, insert citations and cross references, tables, images, equations etc.

Why use it?

• Separates layout and content
• Formatting (mostly) handled automatically
• Good handling of citations and references
• Easy to write maths into a document
• Popular in academic publishing, some journals and conferences will supply a LaTeX template.
• Free and Open Source
• Produces beautiful documents

Why not to use it?

• A bit of an initial learning curve
• Can feel more like computer programming than document writing
• Unhelpful error messages
• Complicated set of addons
• Getting things to look exactly how you want can be hard
• You can’t see exactly what the document will look as you work on it (although some editors have live previews)

LaTeX vs TeX

LaTeX is really a series of macros written in a typesetting language called TeX. These make LaTeX much simpler and easier to use than writing TeX yourself.

Key Points

• LaTeX is a document preparation and typesetting system

• It uses markup language

• Separates style from contents

• (Usually) Does a good job of typesetting

• Outputs to a PDF or Postscript file