Prof. Norm Matloff's 5-Minute L^AT_EX  Tutorial

Acquiring L^AT_EX:

• It is on the CSIF machines in the UCD CS Dept.
• It comes with many Linux distributions. In Ubuntu, you can easily install it via these commands:

  sudo apt-get install tetex-base tetex-bin tetex-extra
  sudo apt-get install xpdf
  

• It is also available for download on other Linux systems, as well as Microsoft Windows and Macs.

Your quick intro:

• Copy the file FvMn.tex to your own machine.
• From any command window in which you are in the directory where you have FvMn.tex, type

  pdflatex FvMn.tex
  

  This produces a PDF file, FvMn.pdf.

• View FvMn.pdf using Acroread, xpdf or any other PDF viewer.
• Now compare the PDF output on your screen to the input file, FvMn.tex, in order to try to see what input commands produce what output. You will be helped in that regard by reading the comments in FvMn.tex (marked by percent signs).
• You should now be ready to create simple L^AT_EX  documents by yourself. I suggest starting by experimenting with various small changes to FvMn.tex, then checking that they work.

Going further:

At this point, you already know the basics of L^AT_EX  pretty well. This may well be enough for you.

To learn more, though, your next step should be to go through a few more real examples. Again, just compare the L^AT_EX source code with the PDF files:

• one of my course syllabi
• a file with extensive, though basic math content

Where to go from here:

Don't try to learn everything at once! Just learn new things as the need arises. When you need to learn how to do X, look it up, probability on the Web. Most L^AT_EX  users learn from examples and from searching the Web, NOT from a book (and definitely NOT from a formal course!).

Here are some resources for you:

• My "look here first" file is only minimally organized, but if you use your browser's search feature, you probably will find what you want here.
• My LaTeX home page has many resources you can use for advanced L^AT_EX  operations.