LaTeX is a typesetting system which is very popular with computer scientists and engineers. The .tex files in the subdirectories of ~matloff/Pub are written in the LaTeX language. You can read them as is, if you like; the embedded LaTeX commands are distracting, but you still can get the general idea of what is going on. However, it is much easier to view them out in processed form. Here is how to do this. Say you have copied the LaTeX source file to your own directory, and named it g.tex. Note: Some of the .tex files do "includes" of .eps files (Encapsulated Postscript, output of the xfig drawing program). So, if you copy a .tex file from a given directory, make sure to copy all the .eps files from that directory too. Then type latex g.tex which produces an output file, g.dvi (which is why it is necessary to do this in your own directory). (Note: You may find that you get a fonts error message. If so, execute unsetenv TEXFONTS You then may wish to put this in your C-shell startup file.) At this point you may either view the processed file in an X11 window, or print a hard copy. (In order to save paper, try viewing first.) To view in an X11 window, type xdvi g.dvi & (Note: If there are included .eps files, older versions of xdvi will not display those files, and you will see blank space where the graphics should be. In such cases, you will have to resort to using dvips -f as discussed below.) To print a hard copy of the file dvips g.dvi You can also make a Postscript version of the file. This is nice, because it can be printed on most laser printers. It is also convenient if you wish to e-mail your document to a friend who does not know LaTeX. To make the Postscript file, type dvips -f < g.dvi > g.ps The Postscript output file g.ps can be viewed from an X window by using either gs or ghostview, or you can make a hard copy by lpr g.ps I really encourage you to use LaTeX for term papers, resume's, etc. It produces very high quality work, and is quite powerful. For example, it handles cross-references very well; e.g. it can handle page-number references such as ``See page 237'' automatically. The easiest way to learn LaTeX is to just compare some .tex input files with with the printed output. I have plenty of .tex files in the directories here; you can get a list of them on your screen by using the Unix ``find'' command: find ~matloff/Pub -name '*.tex' -print Just look at one of those files to get started. You can be doing your own LaTeX within half an hour! (If you are writing a document which contains mathematics, see the sample files in ~matloff/Pub/LaTeX/Math) Again, you can learn without any books, but if you want more details many books on LaTeX exist. The best known of them is the LaTeX User's Guide & Reference Manual, by Leslie Lamport, the developer of LaTeX. I also like LaTeX Concisely, by Adrian Johnstone. By the way, for some LaTeX features you must run latex more than once. For instance, if you do page referencing (e.g. "the note on page 37"), you must run latex twice. If you use \tableofcontents, you may have to run latex several times, in order for the page numbers to be correct. There is a Web site for LaTeX which is very good: http://jasper.ora.com/texhelp/LaTeX.html