LaTeX anyone?

[mmmdreg]

I was reading the latest issue of Macworld here in Australia and it had an article on LaTeX and all..anyone use it? I got it and did a science assignment on it yesterday along with a pretty good tutorial...anyway, check here for a Cocoa GUI frontend...if anyone wants the tutorial PDF for some reason or another, email me...

 

[bousozoku]

It's nice to see that TeX is still around after almost 30 years. Of course, you can still use proff and nroff for your documentation via the command prompt. Who needs a word processor anyway?

 

[cb911]

i don't get it? what is it and what does it do?

 

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by cb911
i don't get it? what is it and what does it do?

It's a mathematical equation editor and printing tool. It came from a time when there were very few (none maybe) dot matrix printers, let alone inkjet or laser printers.

It's kinda nice that it has a graphical interface. That certainly makes it easier.

If you're interested in what a mess it could be, look at the man entries for proff or nroff or troff. I haven't looked at the raw man pages, but they may be set up that way.

 

[cb911]

so is it just for nostalgic purposes, or is it still useful today? either way, i won't be in a rush to get it anytime soon...

 

[mmmdreg]

LaTeX is based on TeX and the link I posted uses pdflatex to make the final documents..ie, the babble turns into a pdf when you compile it...

 

[cb911]

ok, i think that i'm finally starting to understand what it is...

but i can't understand why you all are so interested in it?

 

[Beej]

Ah this is sweet... thanks for that link!

I'm using latex to do a bigass assignment at uni at the moment. It's fricken great. Ever tried to use more than a couple of images in ms word? Eek. But latex just does it like you tell it to (ms could learn a lot from that )

It's a very powerful tool...

 

[jefhatfield]

i had some latex pants and they are never to be washed...says it on the tag

http://www.turnrock.com

 

[Over Achiever]

I'm using Scientific Notebook, and it converts the stuff I type on the screen to LaTex. When I switch to a mac, I'm getting VPC just so I can run this piece of software. I might upgrade to Scientific Word...

But its a good program that uses LaTex. Its a lot easier to create math/physics documents on it then mathematica...then again, I'm lousy in the mathematica language. And matlab. And Maple, etc.

Scientific Notebook, Word, Workplace, do a google search, check it out. Its not a bad piece of software.

 

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by cb911
ok, i think that i'm finally starting to understand what it is...

but i can't understand why you all are so interested in it?

I never really had to use it. I was more interested in programming that sort of thing. The man who developed TeX is revered as a god to many mathematicians.

On the other hand, if I needed an equation editor, I would probably do it using a word processor. Lotus Ami Pro had a good one way back when. I wonder how many products are available for Macintosh to do that sort of thing. I suppose I'll research it more as I enter Calculus...eeeek.