Overview
LaTeX (pronounced "LAY-tech") is a language for typesetting, which means your goal is to create a final document for people to read; e.g. a book or web page. Although HTML, Markdown, and Microsoft Word (including PDF) fits the "typesetting" definition, LaTeX is extremely powerful, and is used to create very professional documents, such as academic papers and books.
Why Learn It
- Highly used in university Ph.D. programs to create professional publications. A Ph.D. is someone trained to write and publish reproducible experiments subjected to peer review.
- Can be used in Markdown; i.e. this site to show math equations.
- Free and Open Source
- Portable, cross platform, it's an ASCII text file
- High-quality typesetting heavy on mathematics
- Complex documents including titles, table of contents, index, bibliography
Examples
- IEEE Academic Paper Example - see "References" at end.
- More Examples
- Example
Details
Written in 1980 by Leslie Lamport. Later Addison Wesley (a top famous book publisher) asked Leslie to write it for their use. It was the first application to "Separate Presentation from Content", which is what HTML and CSS does today.