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The L^ATEX process

Because L^ATEX is a markup language, you don't simply type in your text and print. Instead, it is more similar to the writing of a computer program. The document creation cycle looks something like this:

Edit the input file: filename.tex
Run tex or latex or pdflatex or ...(and iterate to eliminate syntax errors--any errors other than esthetic complaints can be eventually fatal):
latex filename, pdflatex filename, etc.
Preview (iterate to improve the document and eliminate infelicities of appearance)
Convert to PostScript (a very powerful but less familiar page description language) and/or to a PDF file (so as to be readily distributed), or (even!) print it out.

Subsections

From the command line [Unix terminal]
Integrated L^ATEX `front ends'

David Wood 2007-06-25

The LATEX process

The L^ATEX process