LaTeX
LaTeX is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents but it can be used for almost any form of publishing.
To be more technically precise, LaTeX is a set of macros for TeX, a macro compiler. When the TeX program is run, it produces a "DeVice Independent" (DVI) file as output. This file contains only positioning information and pointers to fonts, text characters and rules, and must be translated to a device-specific form for printing or display.
The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN) is the primary repository for TeX-related software on the Internet. These include macros, style sheets, graphics packages, indexing and bibliography packages, and so on.
An Extremely Brief Introduction
The example given here is taken from The (Not So) Short Introduction to LaTeX2e. A link to that as well as to other useful LaTeX documentation can be found at http://www.latex-project.org/guides/ .
To begin, create a LaTeX file (which is just a text file):
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Small is beautiful.
\end{document}
Assuming the above text is in a file named foo.tex, run the following command:
latex foo.tex
That will produce a .dvi (device independent) file, foo.dvi, as well as a few other files like foo.log which shows the details of latex's processing, possibly useful for debugging LaTeX source files.
You can convert that dvi file to postscript for printing or viewing with ghostview by running:
dvips foo.dvi -o foo.ps
Or you can produce a pdf file, foo.pdf, by running:
dvipdf foo.dvi
Installation
The main Ubuntu/Debian packages that include LaTeX are:
tetex-base - Basic library files of teTeX tetex-bin - The teTeX binary files tex-common - Common infrastructure for using and building TeX in Debian
Other LaTeX/TeX packages we have installed at CAL are:
tetex-doc - The documentation component of the Debian teTeX packages tetex-extra - Additional library files of teTeX chktex - Finds typographic errors in LaTeX latex2html - LaTeX to HTML translator latex-xft-fonts - Xft-compatible versions of some LaTeX fonts
To see all available LaTeX related packages (most not installed at CAL), run:
apt-cache search latex
Installing a package can be done just by running (as root) a command like:
apt-get install tetex-bin tetex-base tetex-doc
Additional LaTeX Packages
Although Ubuntu offers many LaTeX packages through its packaging system, there are some packages that we have installed manually at CAL. These fall into two main categories. There are those that are related to astronomy and physics journals that provide standard styles and typographic formatting guidelines for papers submitted to those journals. And then there are packages that are so obsolete that Ubuntu no longer includes them in their packaging system. Although, we wouldn't recommend that anyone create new documents that require these obsolete packages, occasionally, some old papers that are still of interest have used these packages and need them to be installed in order to be able to read those papers.
AASTeX
AASTeX is a LaTeX-based package that can be used to mark up manuscripts for American Astronomical Society (AAS) journals. AASTeX enables you to prepare manuscripts and tables for electronic submission to the The Astrophysical Journal and The Astronomical Journal, as well as some non-AAS journals like the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
On the website, you can find Documentation, Frequently Asked Questions, and Sample Files that use nearly all of the capabilities of the package.
psfig
The psfig package enables users to include graphics in LaTeX documents.
From the psfig page on CTAN:
The psfig package is largely superseded, for various reasons, including its non-free licence. For new work, users are strongly encouraged to use the LaTeX graphics bundle, specifically, either the graphicx or even epsfig package. In particular, epsfig, which is always to be found in modern distributions, implements a close analogue of the syntax of psfig.
