Anatomy of a L^ATEX Document

• Like HTML, it is a markup language
• From basic initial parameters, L^ATEX formats for you automatically
• Braces { and } are the delimiting characters for all L^ATEX `environments'--for italics, for bold face, for table-construction, for figures, etc.
• All formatting commands are preceeded with a \

Basic structure of a L^ATEX document

\documentclass[options]{class}
Preamble commands, if needed

\begin{document}
Document text & commands here

\begin{environment1}
Environment 1 commands & text here
\end{environment1}

More document text & commands here

\begin{environment2}
Environment 2 commands \& text here
\end{environment2}

\end{document}

Some useful options:

• Document classes: article, letter, report, slides, book (etc.)
• Document options: 10pt, 11pt, 12pt; letterpaper, legalpaper, executivepaper, a4paper, a5paper, b5paper; onecolumn, twocolumn; notitlepage; titlepage
• Useful environments: abstract, equation, eqnarray, figure, table, tabular, center, itemize, enumerate, appendix, thebibliography
• Environments can be nested

• Comment lines in TEX begin with a % . Any input past a % is ignored.

Common constructs in articles or documents:

• Creating a title page
  • \title{Title text}
  • \author{Author names and addresses}
  • the command \maketitle will create the page using the information provided
• Creating logical sections of text: \part \chapter \section \subsection \subsubsection
\paragraph \tableofcontents \listoffigures \listoftables
• Mathematics
  • In-line: $y = 3x^2 + 4x + 2$ ($ puts TeX in math mode; second $ exits math mode)
  • Displayed: use \begin{equation} ... \end{equation}
  • Remember to use $a$ (inline) for variable $a$ (e.g.)
  • Common function names are not set in italics, so in math mode use, e.g.: \sin \cos \exp

• Tables
  • For math, use eqnarray env, or AMSTex extensions
  • For text, use tabular env
  • Basic syntax
    \begin{env}{lcr} % env = "eqnarray" or "tabular"
a & b & c \\
d & e & f
\end{env}
% where l ==> left, c ==> center, r ==> right, and the number of
% these in the argument is the number of columns
    
• Captions: \caption{text} (in figure or table env)
• Cross-referencing: \label{tag} associates a counter with tag
  • In equation environment, counter is equation counter
  • In figure caption, figure counter
  • In table caption, table counter
  • In running text, section counter
  • \ref{tag} references the counter associated with tag
  • Convention: tag $\to$ tag_type:tag_name (e.g.: sec:intro) (usual types: eq sec tbl fig)
• Bibliographies
  • \cite{tag1,tag2,...,tagn}
  • \bibitem{tag} text of reference
  • bibliography can be entered into doc, or generated from a database using BibTeX

• Embedded postscript graphics
  • Recommended macro package is ``dvips'' (comes with dvips)
  • Put \usepackage[dvips]{graphics,color} in the preamble to load the graphics package
  • For usage see example files and reference manuals:
    \resizebox{h_length}{v_length}{\includegraphics{filename.eps}}
  • Graphics to be included must be eps files
  • Figure can be scaled to fit specified space

• Embedded pdf graphics
  • Same as postscript graphics, EXCEPT: Use \usepackage{graphics,color} in the preamble to load the graphics package. Note the [dvips] option is NOT present.

  • Type sizes: \small \normalsize \large \Large (and others)
  • Font commands: \textfm{text} \textsc{text} \emph{text}\texttt{text} \textit{text}
\text{\em \LaTeX Exercises II: Typsetting simple math}bf{text} \textsl{text} . Be sure to use italic correction \/ where end of italic or emphasized text meets non-slanted text
  • Special characters: $, &, %, #, _, {, }. To print these characters, must use a \ ie, \$ \& etc.

  • Sources for TeX and related software and macros: Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (ctan)- CTAN

  • References for additional Math fonts from the AMS: http://www.ams.org/tex/amstex.html