TEACH LATEX                                        Aaron Sloman Oct 1998
                                                        Revised May 2000
                                                     Revised 10 Feb 2008

The file TEACH * LATEX.TEX is a demonstration file showing how you can
prepare a report in latex and then run it through latex, preview it,
and either print it out or produce a postscript file which you can
print out later.

Latex, which is based on the older and more general, but harder to use
system Tex, is a very powerful document preparation package, which
enables you to produce very high quality printed documents.

NOTE:
    Since this file was written it has become possible to use a command
    'pdflatex' that produces PDF files from latex source files, without
    the need to first create a .dvi file then a .ps file then convert
    to .pdf, which used to be required.

See also
    HELP LATEX
    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/help/latex


CONTENTS

 -- How Latex is used
 -- Why use Latex?
 -- Setting up your .login file
 -- How to use the TEACH LATEX.TEX file
 -- Further information
 -- Diagrams/Figures/Pictures in Latex
 -- Spelling checkers

-- How Latex is used --------------------------------------------------

To use Latex (or Tex) you use your favourite editor to prepare a file
(e.g. myfile.tex) which contains the text you wish to print and also
formatting instructions.

Then latex reads that file produces a new file (e.g. myfile.dvi) which
is in a "device independent" format, but which has all the information
required to display the document on various devices, e.g. printers,
display screens.

There is a viewer called "xdvi" which can be used to display the
document on the screen using the X window system (e.g. on Unix
workstations, X terminals or PCs running eXceed).

Another program called "dvips" can convert the .dvi file to a postscript
file (e.g. myfile.ps) which is suitable for printing on a printer with
multiple fonts and graphical capabilities. Postscript files can also be
viewed on the screen using the "gv" viewer.

Another unix utility "ps2pdf" can convert a postscript file to a PDF
file (e.g. myfile.pdf) for viewing using the Acrobat Reader tool
(acroread), which is available on various machines besides Unix systems,
along with other freely available readers for pdf, e.g. xpdf, kpdf,
evince. See also HELP * LATEX

It is also possible for postscript or graphical files (.jpg, .png)
produced in some other way (e.g. using graphical tools like Xfig or
Tgif) to be imported into a latex file, so that the final document has
figures or pictures included.

There is a tool, "latex2html" which can be used to convert Latex files
to html format for viewing on the web. A more recent file is "tth" which
sometimes produces better results, and is much faster.

-- Why use Latex? -----------------------------------------------------

Latex is used by many mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists,
engineers partly because for many years it has been the most
sophisticated document preparation system for producing papers
containing logical and mathematical formulae. There are many conferences
which require papers to be submitted in Latex format, and some journals
prefer it.

The main reason why it is used is probably personal preference. Some
people prefer a "WYSIWYG" (What You See Is What You Get) word processor
where you constantly have a view of the format of the final document.
Others prefer to type their text in without caring about the final
format, leaving that to formatting commands which can be made to produce
the desired style. The same document can then be formatted in different
ways by changing the Latex "style" files used.

Latex is available free of charge (unlike Microsoft Word) for many
computers and operating systems (unlike Microsoft Word, which is not
portable), and there is a growing collection of tools for using latex,
also free of charge. For example, some of the facilities described below
in for use in Ved are programmed to run latex and its associated
utilities without leaving the editor. There are probably similar
facilities available for Emacs users.

In fact Latex is rather awful to use on its own, as it does not have a
friendly user interface. But that is compensated for by its power. So by
invoking it from Ved you can use its power while avoiding its unpleasant
interface.

Many people who do not like using Latex at first, end up using it as
their preferred means of producing project reports, articles, PhD
theses, books, etc.


-- Setting up your .login file ----------------------------------------

Before you can run Latex, however, you have to set up your .login file
so as to enable latex when you log in. The following instructions
are applicable in the School of Computer Science at Birmingham
but may not be required in other places:

Edit your .login file, and look for this line:

    # setup Latex      # Set up TeX and LaTeX

remove the first "#", and replace "Latex" with "Tetex", leaving

    setup Tetex      # Set up TeX and LaTeX (using the Tetex package)

After that Latex and its associated utilities will work the next time
you log in.

If you don't want to have to log out and then log in again after doing
that, you can leave Ved, and at the shell prompt in an xterm window
type this command:

    setup Tetex

That will tell the unix system which directories to add to search lists
needed by latex, by modifying some Unix environment variables.
(See HELP SHELL)

You can then start XVED by typing the following:

    xved &

and you should be able to follow the instructions in the file
    TEACH * LATEX.TEX


-- How to use the TEACH LATEX.TEX file --------------------------------

There are instructions at the beginning of the teach file in the form
of "comments" preceded by the Latex comment symbol "%". The comments
will tell you in detail what to do. But here is a quick overview.

Get the teach file into VED.
1. Rename the file something like myproject.tex, e.g.
     ENTER name myproject.tex

2. Run the file through latex by doing this in VED:
     ENTER latex

You will get some output in a latex "log file" in a new Ved window,
  (It also creates files myproject.aux myproject.log myproject.dvi
  on the magnetic disk, but not in VED.)

3. Quit that log file, then re-do ENTER latex
    (The second time it builds a table of contents)
   Quit the log file again.

4. View the result by doing this:
   ENTER xdvi

    That should cause Ved to invoke the "xdvi" previewer showing how
    your latex file will look if printed on a laser printer.

5. Move the mouse pointer into the XDVI window.

    If you press the SPACE bar or RETURN it will show the next page.
    If you press the "B" key it will show the previous page

    Examine the file to get a feel for its contents. There should
    be a header followed by table of contents, then numbered sections,
    then a bibliography, then some appendices including program code.

    (You can learn more about the xdvi program and how to control
    it in the Unix documentation file file MAN xdvi)

6. Go back to your Ved file and look at the text in the myproject.tex
file starting from the line
    \begin{document}

Try to work out how the contents of the file generate what you see in
the xdvi previewer.

    Note that mostly latex automatically formats your code, but you
    don't want it to do that for programs or for program output. See
    how re-formatting is suppressed by:
        \begin{verbatim}
            <program code>
        \end{verbatim}

7. Try changing some of the text in Ved file and then redo the
"ENTER latex" command

After redoing it you can get the previewer to "refresh" itself by
iconising and de-iconising it, or partially covering and uncovering it.

More information can be found at the end of the latex file, after

    \end{document}


-- Further information ------------------------------------------------

Note there are two versions of Latex,
    The old one: latex209
    The new one: latex2e

The initial header line of the old style latex file is different from
the header line of a new style latex file.  The VED "ENTER latex"
command has been defined to check the header and use that to decide
whether to invoke latex209 or latex2e.

For a great deal more information on latex see: HELP * LATEX
which is also accessible (at Birmingham) as

    /bham/doc/help/latex

At Birmingham you can also give this address to a web browser

    /bham/doc/latex-help/LaTeX.html

There are books on Latex, e.g.

     Leslie Lamport,  LaTeX  -  A  Document  Preparation  System,
     Addison-Wesley, 1985,

and various Unix "man" files giving further information, which can be
invoked in VED with the "ENTER man <name>" command

    MAN latex
    MAN xdvi
    MAN bibtex
    MAN tex
    MAN gv
    MAN ps2pdf
    MAN pdf2ps

To get very brief information about latex2html give the command

    latex2html -h

There really ought to be a MAN file for it.


-- Diagrams/Figures/Pictures in Latex ---------------------------------

You can use various LaTeX commands to draw pictures, but this requires
you to work out co-ordinates of lines, circles, etc. and can be tedious.
(See the section on "pictures" in the Lamport book.)

It is generally easier to use a drawing package to produce a postscript
file, and then import that into your latex file.

Postscript files, which can contain diagrams or pictures can be imported
into a latex file by including commands which specify where the
postscript files are and where they are to be included in the final
document. (You don't copy the postscript into your latex file.)

There is some information about how to do that in the HELP LATEX file.
Look for sections on the Figure environment and on PostScript figures.

There are several drawing packages available on unix systems. One of the
most popular is called xfig, and is described briefly in
    MAN xfig
It is very powerful, but some people find it a little unintuitive to
use, and prefer a different package called TGIF, described in
    MAN tgif

In general the best way to learn to use packages like xfig and tgif is
to have somebody give you a demonstration.

At some later stage I may extend this file with examples showing how to
produce figures, and also how to include a bibliography and inline
citations using the bibtex command. (See HELP VED_BIB).

See the comment about \usepackage{graphicx} in HELP * LATEX

-- Spelling checkers --------------------------------------------------

In Unix instead of monolithic packages to do everything there are
usually different packages available for sub-tasks and users can choose
to combine the ones that suit them best. There are two main Unix
spelling checkers:

The older one is described in MAN spell, and is accessible from VED as
described in HELP ved_spell.

The more sophisticated newer version (more likely to be on Linux
systems) called "ispell" (because it can be used as an interactive
spelling checker), is described in "MAN ispell" and can be invoked from
Ved to check your latex and other documentation files, as described
in the HELP ved_ispell file.

This is likely to be superseded by "aspell", whose use in Ved is
described in HELP ved_aspell .


--- $poplocal/local/ved_latex/teach/latex
--- Linked to $poplocal/local/teach/latex

--- $usepop/pop/packages/vedlatex/teach/latex
--- Copyright University of Birmingham 2008. All rights reserved.
