Introduction:
LaTeX is a markup language for describing a document. If you have used HTML, or edited a wiki then you will be familiar with the idea of using symbols or commands within a text file to describe the layout of text. LaTeX is commonly used in scientific publishing. It helps you to make well formatted papers, with good looking formulae. It also helps keep track of figure and equation numbers. LaTeX files can be converted into a huge number of formats such as PDF, PostScript, DVI, and HTML.
A LaTeX file is an ASCII file containing the text and markup commands. It can be written in a text editor such as Gedit or vim. It is converted into an output format using a LaTeX compiler. Some people like to write LaTeX files in a more integrated environment, with menus and buttons for formatting commands. There are also many add on packages that add features to LaTeX.
LaTeX was first released in 1985 by Leslie Lamport as an extension of TeX. Tex was developed by Donald E. Knuth. It was first released in 1978. LaTeX is used, as mentioned, earlier in academic environments for book publication and article publication. Not to go off-topic, but LaTeX is also used to create the formulas displayed on wikimedia applications such as Wikipedia! In addition to its ability to display formulas and beautifully created pages, LaTeX can do much more but that goes beyond the scope of this article.
Installation:
To install LaTeX on Ubuntu run the following commands:
apt-get update
apt-get install texlive texlive-base
- TeX Live has a more comprehensive selection of LaTeX tools but takes up more space. This will install a basic subset of TeX Live’s functionality.
- To install the complete TeX Live distribution, install texlive-full. Run the following command :
apt-get install texlive-full
Parveen Kaur 