Project Number 17

LATEX:
Latex is a free environment for rapid latex document development. Latex provides us with efficient typesetting; one has to only worry about the proper content in latex whereas latex itself takes care of the formatting.Latex is most widely used by mathematicians, scientists, engineers, philosophers, scholars in researches and the commercial world and other professional’s format. The typesetting system offers programmable desktop publishing features and extensive facilities for automating most aspects of typesetting
IMPORTANCE:
Latex has widespread importance in writing different documents and in using them effectively. Scientists and mathematicians cannot deny the great benefits and ease they are getting through the use of Latex in making their works effective and presentable.Latex was made when people got dissatisfied with the performance of similar software’s. The facility of the footnotes and the marginal notes the numbering of the sections and representation of the equations are automatically located on the screen. It works in a similar way on all the operating systems and need not any updating of the versions like the other similar soft wares. The output created as a DVI file is a standard and a well documented format.
Latex versions- VER 0.1 beta, VER 0.2 beta, VER 0.21 beta, VER 0.43 beta.
Distributors: Some of the most popular distributions are MiKteX and TeXLive. The TeX/Latex distribution is needed to work with TeX:
Features of latex- It is totally free software. It has an open source code and welcomes all sorts of modifications and innovations. It is portable and runs on all operating systems .It produces high quality documents. Latex is designed for mathematics-related writers so it is no problem to typeset complex mathematics.
The typesetting system:
The working of latex is based on the principle that we keep on typing text in latex, while it is the job of the software to do all the typesetting for us according to our specified criteria. Latex has an interface that is midway between command-line and Graphical User Interface (GUI).Commands are typed in latex and on the basis of our commands the typesetting is done.
How to start working with latex
Download Miktex (for viewing the DVI output)
Download Latex (free download on the internet)
Download Adobe Acrobat Reader (a software to read the PDF files of latex)

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Latex can be learned through latex help tab present on latex screen and through an online book “Learning latex by David Francis”.

A Typical Command Line Session:
Latex itself does not have a GUI (graphical user interface). A user has to remember the commands so as to work. All the commands keep on compiling and in the end we have to type a display command to view the result. This can be said as a drawback of latex as users find it cumbersome.
Screens-
There are 3 partitions of the screen:
 A main screen where the user write all the commands and his text i.e. all the main work is done on this screen.
 A small screen is present at the bottom which is the command line.
 On the left there is another partition where we can find three tabs: contents search and index.

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INPUT FILE STRUCTURE IN LATEX
Latex needs a source file. A latex source file should be given the extension .tex. It is a text file. After latex processes a source file, it creates a .DVI (Device Independent) file. DVI file is the printable output of latex on which most of the editing is done.

Latex environments:
Environment in Latex has a role that is quite similar to commands, but they usually have effect on a wider part of the document.
Document Classes
The first information Latex needs to know when processing an input file is the type of document the author wants to create. This is specified with the \documentclass command.Some of the examples of document classes are article, Report, Book, Slides, letter.

Mathematical mode in latex
The use of latex has made mathematics easy to deal with. It has a special mathematical mode for this purpose.

Example of a mathematical operation in latex is given below:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
The solution to \[\sqrt{x} = 5\] is \[x=25.\]
\end{document}
After you compile this and view it, you should see:

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SOURCE-www.artofsolvingproblem.com

Slides in Latex-
Latex has a special document class that supports slide shows. It helps in making effective presentations.

Output-A Latex output file can be viewed either as a DVI file or a PDF file. PDF document is bigger than the DVI, even if it contains exactly the same information. The main differences between the DVI and PDF formats are:
DVI- needs less disk space and it is faster to create. It does not include the fonts within the document, so if you want the document to be viewed properly on another computer, there must be all the necessary fonts installed. It does not support any interactivity such as hyperlinks or animated images.
PDF- It needs more disk space and it is slower to create, but it includes all the necessary fonts within the document, so you will not have any problem of portability. It supports internal.
DVI File can be viewed using a DVI previewer whereas a PDF file is read by Adobe Acrobat.

Additional features:

1. Spell check-Latex provides its users with the facility of Spell check.
For Spell check type ISP file name in the terminal. The program will show typos one by one. Choices of corrections are also given.

2.Grammar check-The Grammar check requires MS word. To access word, type word in the terminal.

3. Dictionary-Latex provides dictionary with almost 600 latex commands, which speeds up typing using CTRL-X_d command.

4. Thesaurus –To get additional word or synonyms of the word latex provide with the facility of thesaurus to make the document more impressive.

5. Templates- Latex also provides with commonly used latex templates.
6. Multilingual support-Latex also comes with multilingual support that helps us select different languages.

7. Bookmarks-Parenthesis coloring-the parenthesis are shown colored so that the user easily knows that the information to be given there is mandatory.

8. Toolbar-Undo/re-do option-sometimes the user does some unwanted things but they can be recovered by the CTRL+Z & CTRL+Y commands.

9. Help- The help tab helps to create file in simple steps and in addition to this some of the tough commands are also given there so the user may be able to take help from there.

10. Persistent clipboard- Some of the commands can be saved for later use on the temporary memory place.

11. DVI viewer –Latex provides the facility of viewing the DVI output within its screen side by side. Just go to the DVI viewer tab and click it to view it.

12. Syntax highlighting-The syntax i.e. the commands are highlighted so as to make the user differentiate between the text and the command.

Online Resource Section:
Latex can be learnt effectively by different resources present on th internet.A number of books are present to guide the beginners to learn this software.Following are some of the links provided that are useful in learning Latex:
Begin Writing in Latex
Work on Latex by Cambrige University
Latex for beginners
Tobias Oetiker’s

CONCLUSION :
It is a very useful and beneficial software for engineers. By learning this software we can submit our different reports and assignments as PDF files. Every mathematical related problem can be easily expressed in latex, while it is really difficult to work with mathematics in Microsoft Word.
It will broadened the users view and will encourage them to use different software’s to ease their works and extract benefit out of them.

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