What is LaTex? Easily explained
Whether in university or everyday life, scientists and engineers in particular will sooner or later stumble across LaTeX. We will explain what that is here.
LaTeX simply explained
Contrary to what many think when reading for the first time, LaTeX has nothing to do with rubber and condoms. Instead, it is a software for word processing and formulas.
- LaTeX uses - as the name suggests - the TeX typesetting system.
- TeX lets you set exactly how text, graphics and everything else should look in a finished document in its own language.
- LaTeX makes handling these commands more accessible and easier for the average user.
- Especially when you come from WYSIWYG (What You See is what you get) programs such as Word, LaTeX is very demanding because you have to enter your own command for bold print.
- How the document looks at the end depends not least on the program and the default settings, but basically a LaTeX document works almost the same everywhere.
- All TeX programs offer you almost endless design options after a bumpy start, regardless of whether for texts, graphics, diagrams or bibliographies. Above all, the many options for mathematical formulas also set it apart from Word and similar.
- If an option is missing, there is usually someone who has ever had a similar problem and either wrote a new package for it or adapted an old one accordingly - you only have to install it.
- Due to this open source, the worldwide availability and above all the very good functions for scientific texts, TeX - often in the form of LaTeX - is the absolute standard for scientific work.
- Incidentally, LaTeX is also pronounced differently than rubber latex. The X in Tex sounds more like the Ch in Tech. If you write a document with a TeX editor, you "tech" this document accordingly.
- You can see a simple example of a section from a LaTeX document and the associated document in the graphic.
