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<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "/dtds/html4t.dtd">
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<title>Formatting information: Preface</title>
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<body>
<table width="100%">
<tr>
<th class="title" width="66%">
<h1><a name="doctitle">Formatting information</a></h1>
<h2>A beginner's introduction to typesetting with
<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span></h2>
<h3>Preface</h3>
<h3>Peter Flynn</h3>
<h4>Silmaril Consultants<br>Textual Therapy Division
</h4><br>v. 3.6 (March 2005)
</th>
<td class="toc" width="33%">
<h4><a name="doctoc">Contents</a></h4>
<dl>
<dd class=""><a href="intro.html#intro">Introduction</a></dd>
<dd class=""><a href="foreword.html#foreword">Foreword</a></dd>
<dd class="current"><a href="preface.html#preface">Preface</a></dd>
</dl>
<ol>
<li class=""><a href="chapter1.html#get">Installing <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> and <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span></a></li>
<li class=""><a href="chapter2.html#plaintext">Using your editor to create documents</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="chapter3.html#basic">Basic document structures</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="chapter4.html#process">Typesetting, viewing and printing</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="chapter5.html#ctan">CTAN, packages, and online help</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="chapter6.html#otherdoc">Other document structures</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="chapter7.html#texttools">Textual tools</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="chapter8.html#typo">Fonts and layouts</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="chapter9.html#macros">Programmability (macros)</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="chapter10.html#compat">Compatibility with other systems</a></li>
</ol>
<ol type="A">
<li class=""><a href="appendixA.html#cnf">Configuring <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> search paths</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="appendixB.html#tugform"><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> Users Group membership</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="appendixC.html#asciicharset">The ASCII character set</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="appendixD.html#gfdl">GNU Free Documentation License</a></li>
</ol>
<dl>
<dd class=""><a href="bibliography.html#biblio">References</a></dd>
<dd class=""><a href="index.html#index">Index</a></dd>
</dl>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="credits">
<p>This edition of <cite>Formatting
Information</cite> was prompted by the generous help I
have received from <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> users too numerous to mention
individually. Shortly after TUGboat published the November
2003 edition, I was reminded by a spate of email of the
fragility of documentation for a system like <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> which is
constantly under development. There have been revisions to
packages; issues of new distributions, new tools, and new
interfaces; new books and other new documents; corrections to
my own errors; suggestions for rewording; and in one or two
cases mild abuse for having omitted package X which the author
felt to be indispensable to users. ¶ I am grateful as always to the people who sent me
corrections and suggestions for improvement. Please keep them
coming: only this way can this book reflect what people
want to learn. The same limitation still applies, however: no
mathematics, as there are already a dozen or more excellent
books on the market — as well as other online
documents — dealing with mathematical typesetting in
<span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> and <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> in finer and better detail than I am
capable of. ¶ The structure remains the same, but I have revised and
rephrased a lot of material, especially in the earlier
chapters where a new user cannot be expected yet to have
acquired any depth of knowledge. Many of the screenshots have
been updated, and most of the examples and code fragments have
been retested. ¶ As I was finishing this edition, I was asked to review
an article for <cite><a href="http://www.tug.org/pracjourn/" name="C3">The Prac<span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> Journal</a></cite>, which
grew out of the Practical <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> Conference in 2004. The
author specifically took the writers of documentation to task
for failing to explain things more clearly, and as I read
more, I found myself agreeing, and resolving to clear up some
specific problems areas as far as possible. It is very
difficult for people who write technical documentation to
remember how they struggled to learn what has now become a
familiar system. So much of what we do is second nature, and a
lot of it actually has nothing to do with the software, but
more with the way in which we view and approach information,
and the general level of knowledge of computing. If I have
obscured something by making unreasonable assumptions about
<em>your</em> knowledge, please let me know so
that I can correct it.
<p>Peter Flynn is author of <cite><a href="bibliography.html#htmlbook" name="C4">The HTML Handbook</a></cite> and <cite><a href="bibliography.html#sgmltools" name="C5">Understanding SGML and XML Tools</a></cite>, and editor of <cite><a href="http://www.ucc.ie/xml/" name="C6">The XML FAQ</a></cite>.
</p>
</p>
</td>
<td class="legal">
<p>
<p>This document is Copyright © 1999–2005 by
Silmaril Consultants under the terms of what is now the GNU
Free Documentation License (copyleft).
</p>
<p>Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify
this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the
Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no
Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the
license is included in the section entitled <cite><a href="http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/fdl.html" name="C1">The GNU Free Documentation License</a></cite>.
</p>
<p>You are allowed to distribute, reproduce, and modify it
without fee or further requirement for consent subject to the
conditions in <a href="appendixD.html#gfdl-4">section D.5</a>. The author has
asserted his right to be identified as the author of this
document. If you make useful modifications you are asked to
inform the author so that the master copy can be updated. See
the full text of the License in <a href="appendixD.html#gfdl">Appendix D</a>.
</p>
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class="prelim">
<h3><a href="#doctoc"><img src="up.png" title="Table of Contents" width="32" alt="ToC" align="right" border="0"></a><a name="preface">Preface</a></h3>
<p>Many people discover <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> after
years of struggling with wordprocessors and desktop publishing
systems, and are amazed to find that <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> has been around for
over 25 years and they hadn't heard of it. It's not a
conspiracy, just ‘a well-kept secret known only to a few
million people’, as one anonymous user has put
it.
</p>
<p>Perhaps a key to why it has remained
so popular is that it removes the need to fiddle with the
formatting while you write. Although playing around with fonts
and formatting is attractive to the newcomer, it is completely
counter-productive for the serious author or editor who wants to
concentrate on <em>writing</em> — ask any
journalist or professional writer.
</p>
<p>A few years ago a new <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> user expressed concern on
the <a href="comp.text.tex"><tt>comp.text.tex</tt></a> newsgroup about
‘learning to write in <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span>’. <a href="news:comp.text.tex/MPG.18d82140d65ddc5898968c@news.earthlink.net">Some
excellent advice</a> was posted in response to this query,
which I reproduce with permission below [the bold text is my
emphasis]:
</p>
<blockquote class="citation"><a name="K20"> </a><tt>
<p>No, the harder part might be <em>writing</em>,
period. <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span>/<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> is actually easy, once you relax and
stop worrying about appearance as a be-all-and-end-all. Many
people have become ‘Word Processing
Junkies’ and <strong>no longer
‘write’ documents, they
‘draw’ them</strong>, almost at the
same level as a pre-literate 3-year old child might pretend to
‘write’ a story, but is just creating a
sequence of pictures with a pad of paper and box of
<i><a name="p24">Crayola</a></i>s — this is perfectly
normal and healthy in a 3-year old child who is being
creative, but is of questionable usefulness for, say, a grad
student writing a Master's or PhD thesis or a business
person writing a white paper, etc. For this reason,
<em>I</em> strongly recommend
<em>not</em> using any sort of fancy <small><a href="intro.html#GUI" class="acroref" name="A35" title="Graphical User Interface">GUI</a></small> ‘crutch’.
Use a plain vanilla text editor and treat it like an
old-fashioned typewriter. Don't waste time playing with
your mouse.
</p>
<p>Note: I am <em>not</em> saying that you should
have no concerns about the appearance of your document, just
that you should <em>write</em> the document
(completely) first and tweak the appearance
later...<em>not</em> [spend time on] lots of
random editing in the bulk of the document itself.
</p></tt><p class="citation"> (11 March 2003), <cite><a href="bibliography.html#heller"><a href="newscomp.text.tex"><tt>comp.text.tex</tt></a></a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Learning to write well can be hard, but authors shouldn't
have to make things even harder for themselves by using
manually-driven systems which break their concentration every
few seconds for some footling adjustment to the appearance,
simply because the software is incapable of doing it right by
itself.
</p>
<p><a name="mathtex"></a><a name="knuth">Don Knuth</a> originally wrote <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> to typeset mathematics for
the second edition of his master-work <cite><a href="bibliography.html#aocs" name="C21">The Art of Computer Programming</a></cite>, and it remains pretty much the only
typesetting program to include fully-automated mathematical
formatting done the way mathematicians want it. But he also
published a booklet called <cite><a href="bibliography.html#mathwrite" name="C22">Mathematical Writing</a></cite> which shows how
important it is to think about what you write, and how the
computer should be able to help, not hinder.
</p>
<p>And <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> is much more than math:
it's a programmable typesetting system which can be used
for almost any formatting task, and <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> has made it usable by
almost anyone. Professor Knuth generously placed the entire system in the
public domain, so for many years there was no publicity of the
commercial kind which would have got <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> noticed outside the
technical field.
</p>
<p>Nowadays, however, there are many companies
selling <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> software or services,<sup><a href="#F4">1</a></sup> dozens
of publishers accepting <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> documents for
publication, and hundreds of thousands of users using <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span>
for millions of documents.<sup><a href="#F5">2</a></sup></p>
<p>To count yourself as a <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> or <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> user, visit the
<span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> Users Group's
‘<span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> Counter’ web site
(and get a nice certificate!).
</p>
<p>There is occasionally some confusion among newcomers between
the two main programs, <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> and <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span>:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> is a typesetting program, originally written by
Prof Knuth at Stanford around 1978. It implements a
macro-driven typesetters' programming language of some
300 basic operations and it has formed the core of many
other <a name="DTP" class="acroref">desktop publishing</a> (<small>DTP</small>)
systems. Although it is still possible to write in the raw
<span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> 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.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> is a user interface for <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span>, designed by
<a name="lamport">Leslie Lamport</a> at <a name="DEC" class="acroref">Digital Equipment
Corporation</a> (<small>DEC</small>) 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 <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> without
having to learn the underlying language. <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> is the
recommended system for all users except professional
typographic programmers and computer scientists who want to
study the internals of <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span>.
</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Both <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> and <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> have been
constantly updated since their inception. Knuth has now frozen
development of the <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> engine so that users and developers
can have a virtually bug-free, rock-stable platform to work
with.<sup><a href="#F6">3</a></sup> Typographic programming development continues with
the <a name="NTS" class="acroref">New Typesetting System</a> (<small>NTS</small>), planned
as a successor to <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span>. The <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span>3 project has taken over
development of <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span>, and the current version is
<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span>ε</span>, which is what we are concentrating on here. Details
of all developments can be had from the <small><a href="appendixB.html#TUG" class="acroref" name="A40" title="Users Group">TUG</a></small> at <a href="http://www.tug.org"><tt>http://www.tug.org</tt></a></p>
<div align="center" class="sidebar">
<table width="75%">
<tr>
<td align="left" class="sidebar">
<h3><img src="ktip.png" align="middle"> <a name="myths">Debunking the mythology</a></h3>
<p>Naturally, over all the years, a few myths have grown up
around <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span>, often propagated by people who should know
better. So, just to clear up any potential
misunderstandings...
</p>
<blockquote>
<dl>
<dt><b>MYTH: ‘<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> has only got one
font’</b></dt>
<dd>
<p>Most <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> systems can use any OpenType,
TrueType, Adobe (<a name="t2">PostScript</a>)
Type1 or Type3, or METAFONT font. This is more than
most other known typesetting system.
<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span>'s default font is Computer Modern (based
on Monotype Series 8: see
<a href="chapter8.html#fontable-mf">the table in section 8.2</a>), not Times Roman, and some
people get upset because it ‘looks
different’ to Times. Typefaces differ:
that's what they're for — get used to it.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><b>MYTH: ‘<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> isn't <small><a href="chapter2.html#WYSIWYG" class="acroref" name="A41" title="What You See Is What You Get">WYSIWYG</a></small>’</b></dt>
<dd>
<p>Simply not true. <small><a href="chapter4.html#DVI" class="acroref" name="A42" title="device-independent">DVI</a></small>
and <small><a href="chapter4.html#PDF" class="acroref" name="A43" title="Portable Document Format">PDF</a></small> preview is better
<small><a href="chapter2.html#WYSIWYG" class="acroref" name="A44" title="What You See Is What You Get">WYSIWYG</a></small> than any wordprocessor
and most <small><a href="preface.html#DTP" class="acroref" name="A45" title="desktop publishing">DTP</a></small> systems. What
people mean is that <span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span>'s typographic display
is asynchronous with the edit window. This is only true
for the default <small><a href="intro.html#CLI" class="acroref" name="A46" title="Command-Line Interface">CLI</a></small>
implementations. See <a href="intro.html#synchro">the first paragraph in section 3 of the Introduction</a> for details of synchronous
versions.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><b>MYTH: ‘<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> is obsolete’</b></dt>
<dd>
<p>Quite the opposite: it's under constant
development, with new features being added almost
weekly. Check the <a href="news:comp.text.tex"><tt>comp.text.tex</tt></a> for messages about recent
uploads to <small><a href="chapter5.html#CTAN" class="acroref" name="A47" title="Comprehensive Archive Network">CTAN</a></small>. It's
arguably more up-to-date than most other systems:
<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> had the Euro (€) before anyone else, it had
Inuktitut typesetting before the Inuit got their own
province in Canada, and it still produces better
mathematics than anything else.
</p>
</dd>
</dl>
</blockquote>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
<div align="center" class="sidebar">
<table width="75%">
<tr>
<td align="left" class="sidebar">
<h3><img src="ktip.png" align="middle"> <a name="myths2">More mythology</a></h3>
<blockquote>
<dl>
<dt><b>MYTH: ‘<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> is a Unix system’</b></dt>
<dd>
<p>People are also heard saying:
‘<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> is a Windows system’,
‘<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> is a Mac system’, etc.,
etc. <i>ad nauseam</i>.
<span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> systems run on almost every computer in use, from
some of the biggest supercomputers down to handhelds
(<small><a href="intro.html#PDA" class="acroref" name="A48" title="Personal Digital Assistant">PDA</a></small>s like the Sharp
<i><a name="p25">Zaurus</a></i>). That includes
Windows and Linux PCs, Macs, and all other Unix systems.
If you're using something <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> doesn't run
on, it must be either incredibly new, incredibly old, or
unbelievably obscure.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><b>MYTH: ‘<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> is ‘too
difficult’’</b></dt>
<dd>
<p>This has been heard from
physicists who can split atoms; from mathematicians who
can explain why <span class="math">π</span> exists; from business people who can
read a balance sheet; from historians who can grasp
Byzantine politics; from librarians who can understand
LoC and MARC; and from linguists who can decode Linear
‘B’. It's nonsense: most people grasp
<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> in 20 minutes or so. It's not rocket
science (or if it is, I know any number of unemployed
rocket scientists who will teach it to you).
</p>
</dd>
<dt><b>MYTH: ‘<span class="LATEX">L<span class="A">A</span><span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span></span> is ‘only for
scientists and
mathematicians’’</b></dt>
<dd>
<p>Untrue. Although it grew up
in the mathematical and computer science fields, two of
its biggest growth areas are in the humanities and
business, especially since the rise of <small><a href="chapter10.html#XML" class="acroref" name="A49" title="Extensible Markup Language">XML</a></small> brought new demands for automated
web-based typesetting.
</p>
</dd>
</dl>
</blockquote>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
<ol class="footnotes" start="">
<li><a name="F4">See, for example, the list of <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> vendors on <a href="intro.html#vendors">Table </a>, and the list of consultants
published by <small><a href="appendixB.html#TUG" class="acroref" name="A36" title="Users Group">TUG</a></small>.</a></li>
<li><a name="F5">A guesstimate. With free software it's impossible
to tell how many people are using it, but it's a
<em>lot</em>.</a></li>
<li><a name="F6">Knuth still fixes bugs, although the chances of finding
a bug in <span class="TEX">T<span class="E">E</span>X</span> these days approaches zero.</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
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