TEXand L^ATEX

TEX is full facility type-setting program capable of producing documents of high quality. L^ATEX is a special version of TEX which has standard document layouts built in which makes it easier to use when producing new documents in these layouts. The document you are reading now uses L^ATEX. For both TEX and L^ATEX work you create a file with any editor which consists of the document and commands, all of which start with the character `$\backslash$'.

As a simple illustration of L^ATEX, log onto PPLXGEN and type:-

cp $\sim$west/tex_examples/example.tex ./

Type out example.tex to see what it contains. Now pass it through L^ATEX by:-

latex example

This will display a few lines on the screen and produce the file example.dvi DVI stands for DeVice Independent - you will see why soon). The document starts with a table of contents but that will not be shown the first time you process the file; L^ATEX builds it but too late to add it to the output. However it stores the table in the file example.aux and running L^ATEX a second time will produce the table.

You can preview the results using XDVI.