Synopsis

LaTeX is freeform in that one simply types ASCII strings in a text editor. You do not attempt to e.g. format your text using the editor. Instead, you embed certain commands, themselves ordinary strings, in the text as you write it. When the LaTeX system is run over your file, it will read the commands and carry out the relevant actions. Normally, you will have a separate viewer program that allows you to inspect the formatted result and to print it off. Commands are distinguished in that they begin with a tex2html_wrap_inline1871 character. Some commands have arguments, others do not. Many commands come in \begin -- \end pairs, thus you have to specify where you want some effect to start and where it should end. Other commands demand that you place the text affected within curly braces. We will see examples below. Thus, you can only see what the output looks like after you have run LaTeX, which is odd for those who are used to WYSIWYGgif word processors. One advantage, however, is that files can easily be mailed and exchanged. Moreover, one can get very sophisticated control over text layout. Where LaTeX falls down in terms of easiness of use is where diagrams are concerned. We will see how to get round this below.

A major plus in using LaTeX is that it is generally straightforward to effect a conversion from LaTeX to HTML, this being more or less a mapping from one mark-up language to another. We use the LaTeX2HTML package for conversion, which is very well supported and with which the editing team has valuable experience.

A document must have a \documentclass declaration at the top. The one recommended for EAGLES is to be found at the top of the file initial.tex which should be included at the beginning of your own text. However, special considerations apply if you are working on a joint document: you may be asked by your editor to supply only parts of an overall document and may thus not need to wrap your text up as a document -- however, it would aid editors enormously if you were able to treat your own text as a document while you wrote it, in order to make sure the text can in fact be processed properly when the editor eventually integrates it in the overall document.

The text body of each document begins after the command \begin{document} and the entire document (plus bibliography, etc.) ends with the command \end{document}. Prior to \begin{document} you will find declarations that govern e.g. page dimensions, line spacing and so on. These are again part of the contents of initial.tex.

In a large report consisting of many sub-parts, use the LaTeX \input{} command to include a series of files. Here is an example, where three files called intro.tex, nouns.tex and verbs.tex are included. Do not use the \include command. New pages may not be necessary in some LaTeX styles.

 \newpage
 \input{intro}
 \newpage
 \input{nouns}
 \newpage
 \input{verbs}


ceditor@tnos.ilc.pi.cnr.it