This is a sample file in the text formatter LaTeX. I require you to use
it for the following reasons:
It produces the best output of text, figures, and equations of any
program I've seen.
It is machine-independent. It runs on Linux, Macintosh (see
TeXShop), and Windows (see MiKTeX) machines. There are web-based
versions, https://www.overleaf.com.
You can e-mail ASCII text versions of most relevant files.
It is the tool of choice for many research scientists and engineers.
Many journals accept LaTeX submissions, and many books are written
in LaTeX.
Some basic instructions are given next. Put your text in here. You can
be a little sloppy about spacing. It adjusts the text to look good. You
can make the text smaller. You can make the text tiny.
Skip a line for a new paragraph. You can use italics (e.g.
Thermodynamics is everywhere) or bold. Greek letters are a snap:
, , , . Equations within text are easy--- A well
known Maxwell thermodynamic relation is
. You can also set aside
equations like so: $$\begin{aligned}
du &=& T\ ds -P\ dv, \qquad \mbox{first law.}\label{fl}\
ds &\ge& {\delta q \over T}.\qquad \qquad \mbox{second law.} \label{sl}
\end{aligned}$$ Eq. ([fl])
is the first law. Eq. ([sl]{reference-type="ref"
reference="sl"}) is the second law. References[1] are available. If you
have a postscript file, say sample.figure.eps, in the same local
directory, you can insert the file as a figure. Figure
1, below, plots an
isotherm for air modeled as an ideal gas.
You can create a LaTeX file with any text editor (vi, emacs,
gedit, etc.). To get a document, you need to run the LaTeX application
on the text file. The text file must have the suffix ".tex" On a Linux
cluster machine, this is done via the command
latex file.tex
This generates three files: file.dvi, file.aux, and file.log. The
most important is file.dvi.
The finished product can be previewed in the following way. Execute the
commands:
dvipdf file.dvi
This command generates file.pdf, which can be viewed with many
standard tools. Alternatively, you can use TeXShop on a Macintosh or
MiKTeX on a Windows-based machine. Another very good and modern
option is the web-based
https://www.overleaf.com. The .tex file
must have a closing statement as below.
Lamport, L., 1986, LaTeX: User's Guide & Reference Manual,
Addison-Wesley: Reading, Massachusetts. ↩︎