2. A documentation preparation system
Document markup language
Here, what you see, is what you mean (WYSIWYM) as
compared to what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG)
TeX and LaTeX
TeX: All about formatting
LaTeX: All about content
Not a word processor!
2Theory of LaTeX
3. Complex for large documents
Time consuming
Context switch between formatting and content
3Theory of LaTeX
4. “Separate what changes from what remains the same”
What remains the same – The formatting information
(Template, as we call it!)
What changes – The content of the document
Famous example – HTML – CSS separation
Why not apply the same for document preparation?
Separate the content of the document from the styling
information
4Theory of LaTeX
5. It applies the design principle to solve the document
preparation problem
What changes – The content; place this is in .tex file
What is constant – The styling information place this
in .cls file
5Theory of LaTeX
Styling Content Document
Separation of concerns
6. Predefined environments – avoids rework
Programmability
Justification and hyphenation
Ligatures
Kerning
6Theory of LaTeX
8. Word InDesign pdfLaTeX
Number of
hyphenations
9 10 4
SD of IWS (pt) 2.26 1.94 1.42
Maximum IWS
(pt)
14.4 13.2 9.0
Number of lines
with IWS > 9pt
5 2 0
8Theory of LaTeX
10. .tex + libs
• Source code containing the author’s work
.dvi
• Device independent file – too universal
.aux
• By product file, used by the compiler to resolve forward references
.log
• Logs the compilation process - errors
.ps
• A printable PostScript file obtained from dvi file
.pdf
• Something that we have been waiting for – a portable document format
10Theory of LaTeX
