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Things TeXnical
What is TeX? TeX (usually pronounced Teck) is a typesetting system
written by Donald Knuth, which is especially suited to typesetting mathematics.
TeX constructs (written in ASCII text) have also become the primary means
of communicating mathematical ideas by e-mail. Here are some examples:
For further
explanation, see below.
Knuth developed a system of `literate programming' to write TeX, and he
provides the literate (WEB) source of TeX free of
charge, together with tools for processing the web source into something
that can be compiled and something that can be printed;
there's never any mystery about what TeX does. Furthermore, the WEB
system provides mechanisms to port TeX to new
operating systems and computers; in order that one may have some
confidence in the ports, Knuth supplied a test by means of
which one may judge the fidelity of a TeX system. TeX and its documents
are therefore highly portable.
TeX is a macro processor, and offers its users a powerful programming
capability. For this reason, TeX on its own is a pretty
difficult beast to deal with, so Knuth provided a package of macros for
use with TeX called plain TeX; plain TeX is
effectively the minimum set of macros one can usefully employ with TeX,
together with some demonstration versions of
higher-level commands (the latter are better regarded as models than
used as-is). When people say they're "programming in
TeX", they usually mean they're programming in plain TeX.
$e^{i\pi}+1=0$
$\int_0^\infty e^{-x} dx = 1$
$\sum_{i=0}^n i = \frac12 n(n+1)$
Explanation:
TeX is a typesetting system written by Donald E. Knuth, who says in the
Preface to his book on TeX
that it is "intended for the creation of beautiful books-and especially
for books that contain a lot of mathematics".
Lesson
1
2
3
4
5
6
Basic
More
Equation
Definitions
Bibliography
Including
commands
commands
arrays
and lists
and theorems
graphics
Example
ex1.tex
ex2.tex
ex3.tex
ex4.tex
ex5.tex
ex6.tex
figure1.pdf
Exercise
ass1.pdf
ass2.pdf
ass3.pdf
ass4.pdf
ass5.pdf
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If you have any comments on these pages,
feel free
to e-mail me:
pkp@maths.uq.edu.au