Learn how to use Latex.

Posted 2020-10-09

I had been learning Latex for a little while during my studying at Edinburgh, which was maninly for fun. This time I would like to pick it up again for the same reason - fun. I just had my ankle broken when I was playing basketball, so I had to cancel my train back to Shanghai today and stayed at home for a little more time. Ok, let‘s cut the crap and get down to business.

Generally, a very comprehensive document is provided at this link. From installation to more advanced topics, this provides almost everything you need. And before this, if you have never used Latex or forget how to use it, it is recommended to go through this tutorial first. This article include my notes while I am studying with the PURPOSE to get a lazy ass like me to actually learn something lol.

Part 1. Background knowledges

1) What is TeX?

Basically, TeX is a typesetting system written by Donald E. Knuth, who says in the preface to his book on TeX, that it is "intended for the creation for beautiful books - and especially for books that contain a lot of mathematics". 

2) How to pronounce "TeX"?

The "X", because it is the Greek letter Chi, should be pronounced like "ch" or "k" (if you can‘t do the Greek sound).

3) What is MetaFont?

It was written by Knuth as a companion to TeX. When TeX defines the layout of glyphs on a page, MetaFont defines the shapes of the glyphs and the relations between them. MetaFont details the sizes of glyphs, for TeX‘s benefit, and creates bitmaps that may be used to represent the glyphs, for the benefit of programs that will produce printed output as post processes after a run of TeX.

4) What is MetaPost?

It is very much like MetaFonts, but it outputs vector graphic files instead of run-length-encoded bitmaps. Available output formats are PostScript and SVG.

5) Relevant things with "TeX" in the name.

TeX macro packages (a.k.a. TeX formats): Plain TeX, LaTeX, CONTeXT, Texinfo, Eplain.

Modified tex executables: PDFTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX, e-TeX.

Tex distributions.

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Okay, there are just so many of them, I just listed them here and skip it for now.

What I wanted to do was just to create a TeX HelloWorld, however, it seems all I have seen so far are all about the backgrounds. I will end this article and start a new one for a HelloWorld project maybe tomorrow.

 

 

[1]. MiKTeX Dods. https://docs.miktex.org/2.9/manual/userguide.html

[2]. Welcome to the UK List of TeX Frequently Asked Questions.

http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq/index.html#TheBackground