This book originally accompanied a 2-day course on using the LATEX typesetting system. It has been extensively revised and updated and can now be used for self-study or in the classroom. It is aimed at users of Linux, Macintosh, or Microsoft Windows but it can be used with LATEX systems on any platform, including other Unix workstations, mainframes, and even your Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

Free Ebook Word Processor: A Beginner Introduction to Typesetting with LATEX.pdf

To count yourself as a TEX or LATEX user, visit the TEX Users Group's TEX Counter web site (and get a nice certificate!). There is occasionally some confusion among newcomers between the two main programs, TEX and LATEX:

" TEX is a typesetting program, originally written by Prof Knuth at Stanford around 1978. It implements a macrodriven typesetters programming language of some 300 basic operations and it has formed the core of many other desktop publishing (DTP) systems. Although it is still possible to write in the raw TEX language, you need to study it in depth, and you need to be able to write macros (subprograms) to perform even the simplest of repetitive tasks.

" LATEX is a user interface for TEX, designed by Leslie Lamport at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1985 to automate all the common tasks of document preparation. It provides a simple way for authors and typesetters to use the power of TEX without having to learn the underlying language. LATEX is the recommended system for all users except professional typographic programmers and computer scientists who want to study the internals of TEX.........more

Both TEX and LATEX have been constantly updated since their inception. Knuth has now frozen development of the TEX engine so that users and developers can have a virtually bug-free, rock-stable platform to work with.24 Typographic programming development continues with the New Typesetting System (NTS), planned as a successor to TEX. The LATEX3 project has taken over development of LATEX, and the current version is LATEX2e, which is what we are concentrating on here. Details of all developments can be had from theTUG at http://www.tug.org.

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