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
- The TeX Family in 2009.
- TeX User Group: Valuable Resources
- TeX FAQ Frequently Asked Questions. Look here before asking others: [UK TuG]
- TeX Cookbook -- from MathPro Press.
- Math into LaTeX by George Gratzer. The Fourth Edition (2007) is published by Springer-Verlag. LaTeX book with useful details. [ Download: First Edition (PDF) Free]
- David R.Wilkin's primer "Getting Started with LaTeX"
- LaTeX Cheat-sheet Quick reference for almost beginners.
- LaTeX: Customize the size of the paper, page, text width, height, margin, etc. LaTeX Page Layout 1 and LaTeX Page Layout 2
- Standard LaTeX Symbols,
LaTeX Math Symbols
Comprehensive list of LaTeX Symbols
LaTeX Special Characters (Wikibooks). Maybe use XeTeX (Unicode: UFT-8)- FONTS: Metafont sources, AMS Fonts page.