[aus.tex] LaTeX

krooglik@ecr.mu.oz.au (Alexander KROOGLIK) (05/16/91)

  OK, I am finally getting somewhere with TeX!! But no-one told me just
HOW complicated this damn software is!!

  Anyway, on to the main issue here. I have an Amiga 2000 and I want to
know how one uses LaTeX. I have the full complement of files and don't
envisage any problems in this respect. I have asked for A4 formatting
files, and many thanks to the people who helped me, but now I need to
ask the obvious question : "HOW DO I USE LATEX?".

  Thanks again...


-----krooglik@ecr.mu.oz.au----                               "Once a Chem Eng,
|	Alex Krooglik	     |________________               always a Chem Eng"
|	Faculty of Chemical Engineering	     |__________
|_______University of Melbourne________________________|
--------krooglik@ecr.mu.OZ----                              "Once a Chem Eng,
+	Alex Krooglik	     |________________               always a Chem Eng"
+       Faculty of Chemical Engineering	     |__________
+_______University of Melbourne________________________|

johnz@cs.su.oz (John Zic) (05/16/91)

There really is only one way to learn how to use LaTeX --- go down to your
library, and look up "LaTeX: a Document Preparation System. User's Guide
and Reference Manual" by Leslie Lamport.  It is _lot_ easier than trying
to wrestle with raw TeX!

jcg852@jcsneuro.uucp (John C Gallant) (05/17/91)

krooglik@ecr.mu.oz.au (Alexander KROOGLIK) writes:
....
>files, and many thanks to the people who helped me, but now I need to
>ask the obvious question : "HOW DO I USE LATEX?".

If  you can't get hold of the LaTeX book, ``Essential LaTeX'' is a 17
page outline of what LaTeX is and how to use it. It is available by ftp
from a number of sites - I have just done a lookup of essential.latex on
archie and mailed you the results. (If you want to know more about
archie, telnet quiche.cs.mcgill.ca and login as archie). When you have
got the file, do "latex essential.latex" and proceed as you would for
TeX. You may need to process the file twice if there are
cross-references.


-- 
Please note "ReplyTo:" field in header; "From:" field is incorrect.

John Gallant

farrell@cs.uq.oz.au (Friendless) (05/17/91)

In <2427@cluster.cs.su.oz.au> johnz@cs.su.oz (John Zic) writes:
>There really is only one way to learn how to use LaTeX --- go down to your
>library, and look up "LaTeX: a Document Preparation System. User's Guide
>and Reference Manual" by Leslie Lamport.  It is _lot_ easier than trying
>to wrestle with raw TeX!

  I found the only way to achieve anything was to know Tex anyway, so I read
the Tex book from cover to cover. Now I don't worry about latex's ignorance
anymore, because if it don't work straight away I break the bastard so it
never works again :-). BTW, I reckon there are a few things that I would like
to know that aren't in either of these books, and I don't believe that's the
way life's meant to be.


Friendless

soh@andromeda.trl.OZ.AU (kam hung soh) (05/19/91)

krooglik@ecr.mu.oz.au (Alexander KROOGLIK) writes:

>  OK, I am finally getting somewhere with TeX!! But no-one told me just
>HOW complicated this damn software is!!

>  Anyway, on to the main issue here. I have an Amiga 2000 and I want to
>know how one uses LaTeX. I have the full complement of files and don't
>envisage any problems in this respect. I have asked for A4 formatting
>files, and many thanks to the people who helped me, but now I need to
>ask the obvious question : "HOW DO I USE LATEX?".

Leslie Lamport's book is a good reference, but a poor tutorial.  I
found the best way to learn LaTeX was to put off doing any tricky
things until I had to.  My big problem initially was mistaking the
backslash for the escape character (which it is NOT).  Aside: the good
point about these text processing languages (including [tn]roff) is
that I stopped worrying about how every page looked like and
concentrated on my writing.  I made myself a template suitable for most
reports and assignments, and just uncommented anything I needed
(apologies to real LaTeX experts).  Below is my rough-and-ready LaTeX
template:

\documentstyle[a4wide]{article}

%\title{}
%\author{}
%\date{}
\begin{document}
%\maketitle

\section{}

% Some math
%\[
%\]

% Some tables
%\begin{tabular}{|l or r or c|} \hline
% & ... & ... & \\
%\end{tabular}

% Some lists
%\begin{enumerate}
%\item
%\end{enumerate}

% Some bibliographies.  Use \cite{the item} in document.
%\begin{thebibliography}
%\bibitem{}
%\end{thebibliography}

\end{document}

-----------
Soh, Kam Hung      email: h.soh@trl.oz.au     tel: +61 3 541 6403 
Telecom Research Laboratories, POB 249 Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia