L^aT_eX

Introduction

L^aT_eX (pronounced like this) is a free typesetting system that uses T_eX as its formatting engine. Leslie Lamport developed L^aT_eX in 1985, based on Donald Knuth's T_eX typesetting language. The beauty of L^aT_eX is that it automatically produces the best document design (well, most of the time) so that an author does not have to play with complicated design elements for proper typesetting. In addition to producing pretty documents, L^aT_eX automatically updates equation, table, and figure numbers, properly places figures and tables, typesets beautiful equations, and has a host of other great features that simplify tasks that would be difficult or impossible with a traditional word processor.

So why bother learning L^aT_eX? If you plan to write either a professional-looking document or a large report that includes figures (e.g., a thesis, résumé, business proposal, journal article, conference preprint, etc.), then L^aT_eX is for you. Try embedding multiple, large figures into a Microsoft Word document and make them fit in an appropriate spot on the intended page. Make a table of contents, add dozens of numbered equations, then go back and add a few pages of text and numbered figures in the middle. If Word doesn't crash first, you can quickly see why L^aT_eX is so wonderful for scientific publications. L^aT_eX automatically takes care of all of these typesetting problems! For more great reasons to use L^aT_eX, learn about TeX, LaTeX, and friends.

I have found that L^aT_eX is an indispensable tool for me in the field of meteorology. I used L^aT_eX to write my dissertation and résumés and I still use it to write manuscripts, conference preprints, class handouts, exams, recommendation letters, and other documents. The American Meteorological Society permits manuscript authors to upload L^aT_eX files directly in the production process using their template.

Documentation

For references and documentation, I would start with The Not So Short Introduction to L^aT_eX 2_ε. This is a fantastic reference and might be the only one that you need for now. You can learn about L^aT_eX from the L^aT_eX project, while CTAN contains a collection of materials related to the T_eX typesetting system. Norman Matloff provides a great collection of tutorials. You can search for help sorted by subject, command, or environment or read from this collection of introductions and online help. If you want to use EPS graphics or other formats in your documents, learn about Using Imported Graphics in L^aT_eX and pdfL^aT_eX.

A Simple L^aT_eX File

Begin your first exposure to L^aT_eX by downloading simplex.tex into a suitable directory on Blizzard. Our ultimate goal is to produce a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. You can produce a PDF file using two different methods, often with different results. We'll use one method here (the other involves the pdflatex command). At the Linux prompt, try latex simplex.tex
latex simplex.tex Yes, type it twice
dvips -o simplex.ps simplex.dvi
ps2pdf simplex.ps This set of commands allows you to successfully include EPS graphics in your document and produces a device independent (DVI) file that you can view with xdvi simplex.dvi and a PostScript file that you can view with gv simplex.ps. The last line converts the PostScript file into a PDF file.

View your PDF file with acroread simplex.pdf or open a WinSCP window (or other SFTP client) and download the PDF file to your local machine. The latter method is probably faster off campus. After you view this example as a PDF, open simplex.tex with gvim to see the source. Try modifying some of the text and commands to see what happens.

Encountering Errors

Sometimes, L^aT_eX does not provide particularly informative error messages, but it does give you a line number just before giving you a ? prompt. Enter q at the prompt to abort and then enter :linenumber in gvim to locate the offending line. Common errors include forgetting to close parentheses or dollar signs, problems in equations, and trying to use unknown commands such as \whatisthis. Continually hitting enter at the ? prompt will allow L^aT_eX to complete. You can usually see what went wrong by viewing either your .dvi file or your finished PDF file. If you can't figure out the error, please send me an email.

American Meteorological Society Publications

The American Meteorological Society provides very specific instructions for typesetting extended abstracts to accompany oral and poster presentations at meetings. Your task is to write an article that follows these formatting specifications. To get you started, I've provided preprint.sty, which contains code to specify certain L^aT_eX styles. This style file provides code for JP1-2.tex, which is where the L^aT_eX source code resides. These files and others are located in etacomp.tar.gz, which you may place into your directory on Blizzard. Unpack this file and view the files with gunzip etacomp.tar.gz
tar xvf etacomp.tar
cd etacomp To create a PDF, you could use latex JP1-2.tex
latex JP1-2.tex
dvips -o JP1-2.ps JP1-2.dvi
ps2pdf JP1-2.ps Instead of typing all these commands every time you want to view your finished PDF file, you may find it useful to execute a shell script with these commands. You have pdf.sh in your etacomp directory. Try this instead: ./pdf.sh Open pdf.sh with a text editor to see the shell commands.

Your job requires writing your own article in L^aT_eX by modifying my etacomp example. You may either write something completely original or modify a paper that you have already written for another class (in any case, you may not plagiarize someone else's work). Your preprint article must contain at least the following:

• Two vector graphics images (see vector graphics)
• Two inline equations
• Two numbered and displayed equations
• References in the text to each of the numbered equations and figures using labels (not hard-coded numbers)

If your pre-written paper does not contain these elements, just make something up and add them. The point of this assignment to produce a document with L^aT_eX. Post your completed article (in PDF format) on your password-protected Web page, along with your .tex file.