LaTeX is one of the definitive ways of writing professional quality Mathematical documents; it is a markup language for the TeX typesetting system. Here are some of the many good things about LaTeX:

• it is open source, and is freely available for all OS
• it handles chapter, section, figure, table, equation, etc enumeration and cross referencing elegantly, efficiently, and easily
• it is easily customizable through the use of packages and newcommands
• LaTeX files are stored as plain text, which makes for small file sizes that are easily search-able, and are as stable as the text editor that you use
• large documents can be built piece-meal, and easily manipulated to change ordering; enumerations and cross-referencing change automatically
• LaTeX emphasises content over form- you spend time typing the content in, and worry about the global appearance once the content is finished

The only 'bad' thing about LaTeX is that there is something of a learning curve- but learning new things is always good!

Is LaTeX for you?

As LaTeX users we are all in debt to Donald Knuth (pronounced Ka-NOOTH) and Leslie Lamport.

Donald Knuth invented the type setting system TeX. Leslie Lamport made LaTeX, which is based on TeX. It is hard to imagine the world of Mathematics without these two heroic contributions.

This page is mainly designed as a 'newbie-tutorial', and does not cover many advanced features, although some are hinted at in the 'Sample documents' at the bottom of this page. If you are completely new to LaTeX and have never used it before, I suggest you read and work through each topic sequentially.

You can read about more advanced features in the Not so short guide to LaTeX (for example), and on many, many other websites.

If you find mistakes, errors, or inaccuracies on this website, then please e-mail me with the details.

You will almost certainly want to go into more depth with all of the features covered here, so once you want to do so you may like to begin with the following resources

• http://www.latex-project.org/ is the LaTeX home page
• http://ctan.org/ which stands for 'Comprehensive TeX Archive Network has all of the currently officially supported packages with documentation (assuming that they have been provided by the author)
• Not so short guide to LaTeX is an awesome (but encyclopaedic) document
• The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List
• http://tex.stackexchange.com/ is a community-based Q&A site
• Wikipedia has some useful pages too

In addition to these you will have great success by googling your interest, such as (for example) 'subfigures in latex'.

There are many options for installing a LaTeX distribution, the following directions describe some of the options available.

Windows users:

MAC users

Linux users

To test that you have your LaTeX distribution up and running, we will first make the 'obligatory' Hello World document.

1. Copy and paste the following into your text editor, and save it as myfile.tex

		
\documentclass{article}
					
\begin{document}
Hello world
\end{document}
				

2. Compile it using pdflatex Note that performing this operation varies in the different IDEs; it may involve clicking a button that says, 'Build' or 'Tex', or something similar. From the command line the syntax is pdflatex myfile.tex
3. View the pdf file.

If you can see the pdf file with Hello world, then you're off to a great start! We will now build upon this foundation; note that there are many different types of \documentclass - we will discuss a few of them in what follows. Please note that pdflatex is not always appropriate- see the 'Graphics' discussion.

You can add comments to your file using the % symbol:

		
\documentclass{article}

% Comments do not appear in the output!

\begin{document}

% Here we are in the body of the text- this line is a comment

Hello world

\end{document}
				

Adding Mathematical content will be our first instance of having to usepackage, which we do in the preamble

\documentclass{article}

% The part of the document before the \begin{document} is called the preamble
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin{document}

Hello world. Here is my first equation in \LaTeX
\[
	f(x)=3x^2+1
\]
Another way of presenting an equation is
\begin{equation}
	g(x)= \int_a^x f(t) dt
\end{equation}
or perhaps you prefer no numbering
\begin{equation*}
	g(x)= \int_a^x f(t) dt
\end{equation*}

Notice how one equation is numbered, and one is not? 
If you want to write an in-line equation, you
can do so like this: $h(x)=e^x \sin(x)$
\end{document}
				
				

Note in particular that we have used \[ \], $$ and \begin{equation} \end{equation} to enter into Math mode- you will not be able to enter Mathematical content without entering the correct mode.



Please note that this is the barest of introductions to including Mathematical content. You can read about more advanced features in the Not so short guide to LaTeX, together with viewing the documents in the sample files listed at the end of this page.

LaTeX handles all enumerations of Chapters, Sections, and Subsections for you (all of which can be customized)

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\section{In the beginning...}
Some text

\subsection{Subsections have numbers too}
Sub text

\subsubsection{So do Subsub sections}
Sub sub text

\section{Another section}
Now try putting another section at the beginning of this document, 
and watch the enumeration change!
\end{document}
				

Most articles are not long enough to require chapters, but if you need to make use of the chapter facility, change the \documentclass{article} line to \documentclass{report} and see what happens.

One of the many powerful features that LaTeX possesses is its ability to cross reference dynamically; it does so through the use of \label and \ref.

Consider the following example

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin{document}

\section{In the beginning...}\label{sec:myfirstsection}
Some text

Here is my first equation
\begin{equation}\label{myfirstequation}
	g(x)= \int_a^x f(t) dt
\end{equation}
and here is my second equation.
\begin{equation}\label{mysecondequation}
	h(x)= \int_a^x g(t) dt
\end{equation}

\section{My second section}
We saw in Section \ref{sec:myfirstsection} that we could
label equations such as \ref{myfirstequation} 
and \eqref{mysecondequation}

\end{document}
				

There are a number of things that should be noted here:

• you need to compile LaTeX twice in order to get the cross references correct. The reason for this is that on the first compilation the references are written (and read, if they exist) to the .aux file; on the second compilation, the references are read from the .aux file
• If you move the 'second' section to the beginning of the document, and compile LaTeX twice again, then the enumerations will all change, and the cross references will change automatically
• We have used \ref and \eqref in the above; the only difference is that \eqref puts () around the reference
• All enumerated objects such as Chapters, Sections, Subsections, Subsubsections, Equations, Tables, Figures, etc can all be labelled and referenced in this way, and the cross referencing will always be kept up to date dynamically with very little effort from the user
• The user should (of course) make sure not to use the same \label for more than one object; LaTeX will compile just fine, but will warn you of your mistake

The following code shows a very simple table construction

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin{document}

\centering
\begin{tabular}{r||c|l}
	$t$	&	$x$	&	$y$	\\ \hline \hline
	$0$	&	$1$	&	$2$	\\
	$1$	&	$3$	&	$4$	
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

The argument after \begin{tabular} which is {r||c|l} specifies that there are three columns, corresponding to the three letters r, c and l. Furthermore, the letters used specify how the content of each column is to be justified

• the r, c, l stand for
  • l: left justified
  • c: centered
  • r: right justified
  So, for example, to obtain a table with five columns, each one containing centred text, the appropriate argument is {ccccc}
• The pipe | specifies that a vertical line should be drawn between columns. If you specify || then a double line will be drawn between columns.

So far we have been using pdflatex, but as soon as we insert figures into our document this may cease to be appropriate.

pdflatex will continue to work provided that your figures are .png, .pdf or .jpg files. For all other types of picture files you need to change the way you compile your .tex files.

Windows users of TeXnic center can simply change the compiling options to Latex=>dvi=>ps=>pdf, which should take care of everything for you. Windows users of other IDEs will need to follow steps similar to those listed below.

Users on other OS should perform the following operations from the command line (in order):

latex myfile.tex
dvips myfile.dvi -o myfile.ps
ps2pdf myfile.ps

Please make sure to read the Compiling options section before reading this section.

LaTeX can handle some of the popular image formats, but prefers to deal in .eps files; most Mathematical software will allow you to export directly to .eps.

Note that you will need to include the graphicx package in your preamble

\usepackage{graphicx}

• .eps

  \centerline{\resizebox{80mm}{!}{\includegraphics{mypicture.eps}}}
  

• .bmp

  \centerline{\includegraphics[width=3cm,height=4cm]{mypicture.bmp}}
  

• pdflatex will also handle .jpg and .png

Tables and Figures are examples of 'floating' objects; the default settings are to let LaTeX decide where to put them - this can be a good or bad thing. Fear not, there are ways to stop them from floating if you are unsatisfied with their placement (see for example the nonfloat package)

\begin{table}[!h]
    \centering
	\begin{tabular}{r||c|l}
		$t$	&	$x$	&	$y$	\\ \hline \hline
		$0$	&	$1$	&	$2$	\\
		$1$	&	$3$	&	$4$	
	\end{tabular}
	\caption[This bit goes in the list of tables]{My first table}
	\label{myfirsttable}
\end{table}

My first table is shown in Table \ref{myfirsttable}

Here is a floating figure
\begin{figure}[!h]
     \centerline{\resizebox{80mm}{!}{\includegraphics{mypicture.eps}}}
	 	\caption{$\vec{r}(t)$}\label{fig:motivation}
\end{figure}
		

• the option [] immediately after the \begin{table} and \begin{figure} can be either
  • h: here
  • t: top
  • b: bottom
  • p: on its own page
  the ! says that LaTeX should try its hardest to achieve your choice of h,t,b, or p
• we label and reference using the same \label \ref scheme that we described previously
• the caption command has an optional argument which is given in [], which specifies the caption that would be used in the \listoftables (more on this later)

Let's say that you're writing a document that contains a certain constant that will be used repeatedly throughout the document. For the moment, let's say that the constant is &alpha (alpha).

One option is for you to type $\alpha$ every time you wish to reference this constant. However, if you decide to change the name of your constant, to say &beta (beta), then you would need to change every occurrence of $\alpha$ to $\beta$, which is a exercise in tediousness. Another option is to use LaTeX's \newcommand feature.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amsfonts}

% define \newcommmands in the pre-amble
\newcommand{\myconstant}{\alpha}

% define symbol for real numbers
\newcommand{\R}{\mathbb{R}} 

\begin{document}

We define our constant to be $\myconstant = \frac{\pi}{3}$.

What if we refer to our constant throughout the text? 
$\myconstant$$\myconstant$$\myconstant$$\myconstant$

Oh, and here's the symbol for real numbers, $\R$.
\end{document}

Obviously this is a very fabricated example; a more useful \newcommand example is

\newcommand{\com}[1]{\iffalse{#1}\fi}

This allows you to comment sections of text quickly and efficiently

\com{
This text was originally going to be used,
but I decided to comment it out in one go
using my newcommand.
}

This is the new text that replaced my commented text.

If you wish to overwrite an existing LaTeX command, then you use the syntax \renewcommand. You can also make \newcommands that take input arguments, as in \com above.

When writing a document of some length that has multiple sections, subsections, tables, figures, etc, it may be appropriate to have a table of contents, a list of figures, and list of tables. LaTeX does all of this for us using the following commands (respectively)

\tableofcontents
\listoffigures
\listoftables

As in our discussion concerning \label and \ref we need to compile LaTeX multiple times

• once to write the aux file (which contains references, headings, etc)
• once to generate the toc from the aux file

But if the toc is long it can move subsequent pages, so we may need to compile again to correct the aux, then again to edit the toc correctly.

There is a myriad of packages available to help you customize your document; we have already encountered the amsmath and graphicx packages. It would be impractical to list every available package, so instead we list a few here that may be useful to the reader. In each case it is suggested that you see the package documentation for further details, all of which are available at http://ctan.org/

• geometry
  this package is used to set the page dimensions, for example

  \usepackage[textheight=25cm,
  		left=3.15cm,right=2.15cm,
  		top=2.5cm,
  		footskip=1.5cm]{geometry}
  

• fancyhdr
  this package is used to set headers and footers, for example

  \usepackage{fancyhdr}
  
  \fancyhf{}
  \fancyhead[r]{CMH}
  \fancyhead[l]{Math 93}
  \fancyhead[c]{Portland Community College}
  \rfoot{\thepage}
  

• hyperref
  this package makes all cross references into hyperlinks- truly beautiful- and it also allows you to set hyperlinks to websites

  \usepackage{hyperref}
  \hypersetup{colorlinks=true, linkcolor=blue }
  

As you experiment with LaTeX more and more, you may come across a package that is not installed on your distribution. Once you have obtained a copy of the package, you will need to copy the package into a directory where LaTeX knows to find it; this will vary depending on your OS, but typical directories are

• Windows: note that MikTeX might be able to locate and install the package for you- if not, then you might try putting it here: C:\Program Files\MikTeX 2.9\tex\latex
• Linux: /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex

Once you have put the package into the correct directory, run the command mktexlsr

You will notice that when you compile your document (myfile.tex say ) LaTeX produces a number of output files. Once you have finished working on your document and are ready to print/post/submit it, then the chances are that you will just want to keep myfile.tex and myfile.pdf

You can read about the various output files on pages 13-14 of the Not so short guide to LaTeX

Once you are ready to delete the output files such as myfile.aux, myfile.log, myfile.dvi, etc then you can either go through and delete them one by one, or you can write a batch/script file to do it for you. e-mail me if you are interested in writing a batch/script file for this purpose. Note that your IDE may have an option to clean up.

The following documents are designed to showcase some of the things that you can achieve in LaTeX; please note that they are by no means comprehensive.

.tex file(s)	.pdf file	Comments
Integration tips.tex	Integration tips.pdf	This document has some equations that may help get you started
instructions.tex	instructions.pdf	This is an instruction manual I made for a Placement Test I wrote. In particular note the use of the packages in the preamble.
Sample exam.tex	Sample exam.pdf	An exam that uses \documentclass{exam} class file. Note in particular that the points are added dynamically. You can do a lot more with this class- this file is very simplistic.
presentation.tex	presentation.pdf	Note the use of the beamer class. To get full affect, maximize the pdf document to full screen.

Here are some other things that you may like to explore

• bibtex
  put all of your references in a file called mybib.bib (for example), then include it in the main document using \bibliography{mybib}. After you have compiled your document (myfile.tex say), use bibtex myfile.tex
• makeindex
  allows you to create an index for the document
• subfigure
  allows you to set Figure 1a), 1b), etc
• pstricks, xypic
  useful for drawing pictures within LaTeX- there is something of a learning curve, but it's well worth it
• multicol
  allows you to typset in multiple columns
• pgfplots
  allows you to draw Mathematical functions within LaTeX