What is LaTeX (was: Re: Offlang suggestion & counterproposal)

En réponse à Michael Poxon <m.poxon@...>:

> Dear Christophe,
> Yes, I found this too - the deadline gradually became even more
> extended
> (one of two days... a week...) until it became meaningless. I suppose if
> you
> are working with students you know where they are - but something as
> is
> being envisaged consists of many people scattered all over the world.
> You
> can't run up to their rooms and bang on their doors to remind them
> there's a
> contribution due. At least not literally!
Indeed. But I can fill their mailboxes :)) . Just kidding :)) . I think people
here are a little more respectuous than my fellow students :)) .

 But there seems to be a demand
> for
> some sort of publication, doesn't there?
It looks like it. And with the things I've installed, I can accept more and
more formats (I still can't do Wordperfect, because the only converter I found
is desperately too limited (it cannot handle images for instance), but IIRC
Wordperfect can export RTF can't it? As for HTML, I'm looking for a converter
that doesn't ask me to install Perl and thirty other things on my computer
(Perl is not the problem, it's the thirty other things :((( ). Strangely
enough, though HTML is quite a simple format I can't find any good converter
for it while I found easily a converter from Word to LaTeX! (which seems to
work quite well, even though it's shareware and I can't enjoy its full
abilities). On the other hand, converters *to* HTML abound). As I said, when I
can do it for free, I don't give limitations :)) .

 What exactly is Latex? I
> thought it
> was something to do with rubber. :-))
Well, latex is, but not LaTeX (mind the capitals, they MUST be there). Let's
make a short summary:
TeX is a program developped by a Mr. Donald Knuth for typesetting. It takes as
a source a plain text file with the ending .tex. This file contains, apart from
normal text, instructions on how to make the layout of the page, indent the
paragraphs, use different fonts, include images, etc... and the TeX program
compiles it into a .dvi (DeVice-Independent) file, which can be read by dvi
viewer (easy to find and free, for all platforms). Another program, which is
always present with TeX, can transform this .dvi into a Postcript file, which
you can then print. Since the display language used by TeX is a little
complicated (it's quite low end), some people developped packages, which
contain already defined functions easier to use and more self-explanatory (and
which can warn when there's a problem at the compilation). The most successful
is LaTeX. It contains environments and commands for everything you can imagine
(and still grows, people everywhere creating new packages which get into the
normal release when they are stable enough). You can put pictures, a
bibliography, equations (which look much more beautiful than with Word),
footnotes and cross-references are easy to make and are always right, the Babel
package allows handling different languages with their own typographic settings
in the same document, and that automatically (basically, the whole point of
LaTeX is that you never have to worry about the layout. It takes care of it
itself, though you can override its decisions), the last release of LaTeX,
LaTeX2e, even handles colours (the last big miss of LaTeX). There are even
packages to draw figures with LaTeX, though they are difficult to use and quite
pointless :)) . And finally, the result looks far better than a Word file (the
fonts are aethetically better). As for the TeX program itself, it's one of the
most stable programs ever created. It is virtually bug-less. Moreover, there
exists now also plenty of other tools around LaTeX, like PDFTex which does like
TeX but produces PDF instead of DVI files, BIBTeX which allows to make a
bibliography database to use for all your texts, etc... It even comes with
Metafont, a program to make fonts, which works like TeX with an associated
language, the only problem being that there seems to be no literature about
Metafont except one (expensive) book.

The last thing about LaTeX is that it's completely free, exists for all
platforms, and can easily be installed through Internet (on my Windows
computer, I use MikTeX, the most complete LaTeX release for that platform. And
it's free). LaTeX is now the de facto standard for scientific publications (all
scientific journals I know accept only LaTeX files, no other format).

So basically LaTeX is the contrary from a WYSIWYG wordprocessor. You write a
text file with special commands in it, compile it, and see the result with
another program (like many people do with HTMl too :)) ).

I have a PDF file called "The (Not So Short) Introduction to LaTeX", which is
better at explaining how it exactly works, if you're interested. Just another
anecdote: just like the name has a funky orthography (a capital *inside* and at
the end? Well, you should see the real shape of the name :)) ), it has a funky
pronunciation. The final "X" should be pronounced [x], though most people (at
least the ones which don't have this sound in their language) approximate it as
[k]. Never pronounce it [ks] in front of a LaTeX user, or be prepared for the
consequences! :))

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.