Mathematical
Typesetting
(under construction)
This page is dedicated to popularizing the mathematical typesetting system known as TeX. There are several well-known variations of TeX, the most commonly used is LaTeX, in particular AMS-LaTeX. TeX is the international standard of mathematical communication, most textbooks and research journals are written in TeX, and any respectable university will insist you write your Master's thesis or Ph.D. dissertation in LaTeX. Lastly, I typeset virtually everything in my classes with it.
What is LaTeX and why you should care
Contents
People of TeX (top)
Donald Knuth, creator of TeX, now professor Emeritus at Stanford. TeX was one of the first open-source programs and consequently is very stable and virtually bug-free.
Leslie Lamport, creator of LaTeX. Cartoon on LaTeX http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1115
The Future (top)
STIX Project Page, Unicode, Charts
LuaTeX
Software (top)
TeXLive—From the page: TeX Live is an easy way to get up and running with TeX. It provides a comprehensive TeX
system with binaries for most flavors of Unix,
including GNU/Linux, and also Windows. It includes all the major TeX-related programs, macro packages, and fonts that are
free software, including support for many languages around the world.
MiKTeX (free) -- an up-to-date TeX implementation for the Windows operating system.
WinEdt™ (inexpensive shareware, pay for it once and upgrade forever, discounted for students) -- a powerful, extremely flexible and versatile native editor and shell for MS Windows with a strong predisposition towards the creation of [La]TeX documents. You can customize virtually every aspect of it to suit yourself. See the Macro Library below to see what many users have contributed.
WinEdt Macro Library (free) -- a collection of macros, plug-ins and other utilities useful for the dedicated WinEdt user.
TeXnicCenter—a free open source front
end to LaTeX. Not as good as WinEdt, but close enough!
Ghostview/Ghostscript (free) -- ghostscript generates postscript while Ghostview is a postscript/pdf viewer.
ActivePerl (free) -- Perl is a very popular computer languiage, sometimes referred to as "the glue of the world-wide-web". Some scripts in MiKTeX require it. You should install it even if you have no intention of ever programming in it.
Adobe Reader (free)
What is LaTeX and why you should care
LaTeX
Project Home Page
CTAN -- Comprehensive TeX Archive Network.
TUG—TeX Users Group
MetaPost (top)
MetaPost (part of MiKTeX) is a graphics programming language that generates postscript that can be converted to Encapsulated Postscript and PDF for inclusion into LaTeX documents. It is part of any respectable distribution.
Denis Roegel -- some interesting examples.
Vincent Zoonekynd -- LaTeX -- Metapost examples: an excellent source of examples and a useful companion to the manual. A large file.
Books on LaTeX (top)
Although there are many online sources of documentation for LaTeX (see the doc folder of MiKTeX, for example), the following books have proven themselves very useful to me over the years. I recommend each one of them highly if you have the budget for them.
A Guide to LaTeX2e by Kopka & Daly.
Math into LaTeX by Gratzer.
The LaTeX Companion by Goossens.
The
LaTeX Graphics Companion by Goossens,
et al.
The
LaTeX Web Companion by Goossens,
et al.
Other books
The
TeX Book by Donald
Knuth
Programming
in Lua, 2nd Ed., by Roberto
Ierusalimschy.
Lua 5.1
Reference manual by Roberto
Ierusalimschy.
