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An Extremely Quick Starter on LATEX.

October 18, 2009

I wrote this brief document to help people like myself who have verylittle knowledge about computers, but would like to use LATEX. LATEXis a

document processor, something like Microsoft Word, but a whole lot awe-somer. It is specifically useful for those who want to type up technicaldocuments, e.g. mathematics documents, chemistry, physics, engineeringdocuments etc. that require special symbols. It would also be very usefulfor people writing books, articles and so on, as it gives you greater controlover document layout etc. Enough chit-chat!

Firstly you need to get a LATEXoperator on your machine. I recommendMiKTeX, the home page is: http://miktex.org/. Go to Download MiK-TeX 2.8 and follow the instructions. I recommend MiKTeX because

1. It is very simple to install.

2. It downloads packages for you.

Ill explain the second point a bit later. Once you have downloaded MiKTeX,you need to install it on your machine. Once you have done that you need toget an interface; I recommend WinShell http://www.winshell.org/modules/wsdownload/. Download WinShell and then install it. If MiKTeX has beeninstalled already, Winshell will automatically find it. Now you have all thetools necessary to start using LATEX, congratulations! However, you stillneed to know how to use LATEX. The standard reference is The Not SoShort Introduction to LATEX 2, available in your language of choice here:ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/info/lshort. After reading through that, youshould be ready to go! Once youve read that introduction you will noticethat LATEXdoes not come installed with all the packages you might want touse. If you have MiKTeX on your computer and you need a package, yousimply put the command \ usepackage{ package name} in the preamble ofyour document, and if youre connected to the internet, MiKTeX downloadsand installs the package for you! No hustle and stress of trying to installpackages yourself!

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A few things I need to add. If you want to include graphics in your

documents, the best way Ive found to do it is with the package graphicx.In the preamble of your document include the command

\ usepackage[pdftex]{ color,graphicx}assuming your using MiKTeX and pdf outputs. Then if you want to includea picture in your document place the following code where you want to putthe picture\ begin{ figure}[h]\ begin{ center}\ includegraphics[scale=scale]{ file name}\ caption{put you caption in here}\ end{ center}

\ end{ figure}For more details on how the code works, refer to the book The Not So ShortIntroduction to LATEX 2.This should be enough to get you going, I hope you found this helpful!

Niflheim.

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