TeX and LaTeX Sources and Utilities
- CTAN, the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network attempts to have
everything: packages, fonts, etc.
CTAN Web Home Page
CTAN Search & Browse
TeX and LaTeX Catalogue Packages and tools
CTAN sites, worldwide
- Fast example. Try LaTeX Online (no local installation needed).
This works in a browser window.
After reading these instructions, press
Start Example
(perhaps reduce the width of the new window).
- In the new window scroll down and click on Render. Scroll more
to display he output.
- Add more stuff in the upper "input box". After
\end{align*} type:
Euler's beautiful formula is $e^{i\pi}=-1$. Another
nice one is
\begin{equation}
\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} e^{-t^2} dt = \sqrt{\pi}
\end{equation}
Not bad at all.
- Again click on Render and scroll to see the output below.
- Close the new window.
- TeX With Installation on your own computer (free!):
The basic step is to install a (large) package with the computer
programs TeX and LaTeX and many additional packages -- including a
special text editor adapted to TeX/LaTeX. You should install a package
designed for your own computer.
- TeX Without Local Tnstallation You can use TeX without
installing it on your own computer. The most popular way is to use
Overleaf. This is
particularly useful when several people are collaborating on a document.
Special tasks: Including Graphics, Slides, Bliographies, Math in
Web Pages
-
Including Graphics in LaTeX by K. Hoppner.
- Making Presentation Slides:
The current favorite is "beamer". It comes with a number of
predefined styles.
See
Beamer,
Beamer Tutorial
(and the old
Beamer article)
Caution: For many programs used to view PDF files with
slides (firefox, googl chrome, okular, ...), use "Presentation mode",
not just "Full-screen".
Some people might prefer the package "talk". It has simple defaults,
especially it lets you change between styles very easily for individual slides.
- Making a Bibliography: The goal here is to make a large
bibliography that can be used for many publications.
Use Bibtex -- or check out
a
LaTeX extension package (an alternative to Bibtex).
- Putting Mathematics in a Web Page.
Do you begin with an html file or a TeX/LaTeX document?
- One current (2024) popular procedure is to begin with an html file
and use MathJax to insert TeX/LaTeX
formulas directly in the html file.
- Another approach is to begin with a complete document that was previously
created using TeX/LaTeX. Two reasonable procedures are to convert to
a PDF file or to use a program that converts to html.
- Convert to PDF: save the document as a pdf file,
either by converting the .ps file to .pdf using, say, ps2pdf (on
Unix/Linux) or else by using pdflatex. I use ps2pdf. While pdflatex
has some advantages, it was a bit buggy -- and it's pdf files are longer.
- TeX/LaTeX to html converters (see also
W3 Org's Math. Page --
primarily discusses MathML).
One standard uses LaTeX2HTML
This converts non-text (such as formulas) to gif that all WWW graphic
browsers can display. Useful but far from perfect.
- View .dvi files directly? This depends on the viewer's computer.
Click on dvi test.
[If you can view dvi files outside of a web browser, you should be able to view
this test file in a web browser by adding "dvi" as a MIME type.]
References