About TeX and LaTeX

TeX (how do I pronnounce that?) is widely used worldwide by academics and publishers because

• it is highly portable and works in the same way on almost all computers and all printers
• it is free software
• it is bug-free
• it is standardized, and so can be used as a reliable way of transmitting documents
• everyone in the academic community has it
• it allows you to typeset documents to the very highest standards
• it provides mechanisms to typeset mathematics to the highest possible quality

LaTeX (how do I pronnounce that?) is a series of macros and packages to be used with Knuth's typesetting program TeX, and LaTeX automatically takes care of much of the document design for you. Using LaTeX, you describe the logical structure of your document (sections, subsections, titles, etc.) and you leave LaTeX to fit these to some built-in document design.

Among LaTeX's strengths are

• LaTeX manages cross references (theorem numbers, bibliography, page references, etc.) automatically.
• You may define macros for special pieces of notation.
• There is a vast library of styles and packages you may use.
• It provides a large amount of extra functionality for typesetting mathematics.

The TeX and LaTeX systems are typesetting systems, not word processors. You have to type a source file containing special typesetting commands using a text editor, and then process the file using TeX or LaTeX. (It's a little like typing postscript commands directly into a file and then sending them to a postscript printer, but it's much much easier than this.)

A typesetting program decides where symbols, such as letters, punctuation etc., should appear. Typesetting is a highly developed art with many subtle points, and is much more difficult to get right than it looks. If TeX and LaTeX are difficult to use that is beacause they aim to give you complete control over a very difficult process. With some experience and expertise you will be able to typeset mathematics to a quality suitable for publishing in the very best books or journals. In comparison, the equation editor in Word may be easier to use, but you will never be able to get the same quality output with Word.

More recently, TeX and LaTeX have been given the ability to produce output a suitable format for publishing on the web. You can use them to produce html or pdf documents, and your pdf files can contain beautifully typeset mathematics. (This is something that is impossible to do with html.) In the future, MathML may provide a alternative way of publishing high quality mathematical typesetting on the web, but MathML is still under development and is not widely used, so at the present time, TeX and LaTeX are the only tools available for such work.

More information: What am I trying to do when I type up my mathematics as a LaTeX document?