Introduction to TeX

1. Q: What is TeX?
   A: It's a Markup Language, with a slightly tedious, moderately ugly, but very precise, flexible and customizable plain text source format (the file will be, for example, hello_world.tex; web-pretty version hello_world.tex; web-pretty) that must be run through a program (or programs) to produce output in a binary form (such as hello_world.dvi and/or hello_world.pdf) which can be printed or viewed on a screen with an appropriate program.
2. The process, in the *nix world:
   • download, using your favorite package manager, texlive-base and whatever other TeX-related packages (maybe some nice fonts?) you want.
   • create, in an editor (not a word-processor!), myfile.tex
   • do latex myfile.tex, producing
        myfile.log
        myfile.aux
        myfile.dvi
     
   • do latex myfile.tex again (if there are any cross-references
   • preview the DVI file with xdvi myfile[.dvi]
   • make a PostScript version with dvips -o myfile.ps myfile, producing
        myfile.ps
   • make a PDF version with ps2pdf myfile.ps, producing
        myfile.pdf
   OR
   • create myfile.tex
   • do latex myfile.tex if there are any cross-references
   • do pdflatex myfile.tex, producing    myfile.pdf
     without the .dvi and .ps versions. [Faster, yes, but doesn't work as well if you want to incorporate image files into your documents.]
3. The process, in the Mac world:
   • largely similar to the above (Macs are *nix under the hood) although it will be more point-and-click-y and you will have to sign a 337 page EULA which gives Apple first dibs on your internal organs during the next Transit of Venus.
4. The process, in the Windoze world:
   • Two common (and free) choices are
     • MiKTeX: http://www.miktex.org/
     • WinEDT: http://www.winedt.com/
   • You probably already have what you need to view PDF files, Adobe Reader. But if not, it can be found (for free) at http://www.adobe.com/
   • Follow the corresponding installation and usage instructions.
5. The process, in an operating-system independent way:
   • Go to www.sharelatex.com and follow the directions there.
   This is an entirely web-based ("in the cloud" would be the fashionable way of saying that) system, so you don't have to install anything and you have access to your writings wherever you are ... if you have Internet access. The downsides are exactly those: someone else is keeping your work (do you trust them?), and it's only useable if you have network access.
6. Looking over the source file hw1.tex (web-pretty version hw1.tex) and its corresponding PDF hw1.pdf.
7. Search engines are your friends, but here are some example resources:
   • http://seeschloss.org/latex/latex_symbols.pdf
   • http://www.stdout.org/~winston/latex/latexsheet.pdf
   • http://www.latextemplates.com/
   • http://www.math.harvard.edu/texman/
   • http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf