Introduction to LATEX and to some of its tools Gianluca Pignalberi, Massimiliano Dominici Abstract different languages, fancy OpenType fonts with contextual shapes and better page and document Writing has a long history. Shorter is the history setup. of typesetting and even shorter is the history of digital typography. Nevertheless, the latter gained Text processing is wonderfully performed by an unprecedented importance because of its capa- word processors (WPs from now on): Word, Writer bility to speed up the process of feeding human and, back in time, DecWrite, WordPerfect, Let- being with well-composed information. terPerfect, WordStar… But, while WordStar and Our lessons, of which this is the number zero, LetterPerfect were not that fancy (they existed are focused on a digital typesetting system that when printers were light years far from the Ap- has come to light in the late 70s of 1900. It was ple LaserWriter), the others listed after Word and intended to typeset scientific books; it is used to Writer were closer to modern WPs. While ancient typeset nearly everything. It is TEX. WPs just allowed text arrangement on the page (no In this short course we will give an overview external elements were allowed; no font selection; on how TEX and its most famous macro package no fanciness) and spell check, modern WPs are LATEX helps engineers, scientists and professionals capable of much, much more. They have partially to compose their documents, being them books, invaded the world of typesetting systems: some papers, reports, presentations, posters. minor publishing houses use WPs to create their camera-ready books and journals and we person- A Sommario ally set up a LTEX class for such a publishing house that used to typeset an academic journal in Word. La scrittura ha una lunga storia. Più breve è la Even a Mid-Pharma company used Word to pro- storia della composizione tipografica e ancor più duce its official reports… until someone discovered breve è quella della tipografia digitale. Ciò nono- that Word was not able to include something like stante, quest’ultima ha guadagnato un’importanza 800 PDF automatically-generated tables into the senza precedenti per la sua capacità di velocizzare il same report and tried to switch to LATEX through processo di rifornire l’essere umano di informazione LYX. Since WPs and typesetting systems have ben composta. different targets, WPs are not yet as sharp and Le nostre lezioni, di cui questa è la numero zero, versatile as typesetting systems are and typesetting sono incentrate su un sistema di composizione di- systems do not see text as their “core business”, i.e., gitale venuto alla luce nei tardi anni ’70 del 1900. they are not intended as “click-and-type” programs. Questo era pensato per comporre libri scientifici; Nobody less than insane would pretend to com- è usato per comporre quasi tutto. È T X. E pare the performances of such different tools. WPs In questo breve corso daremo una panoramica are programs mainly intended to process text and di come TEX e il suo più famoso pacchetto di to let unskilled users produce reports and other A macro LTEX aiuta gli ingegneri, gli scienziati e i documents with a decent look. Typesetting sys- professionisti a comporre i loro documenti, siano tems (once named DTP after DeskTop Publishing) essi libri, articoli, relazioni, presentazioni, poster. are powerful and highly specialized tools to pro- fessionally produce newspapers, magazines, books, journals, fliers, banners, you name it. They just Part I: process text as one of the zillions tasks they do Digital Typography and Not but have to typeset it the best way as possible. LATEX is a typesetting system and so it is its type- 1 Typesetting Systems vs Word setting engine: TEX. As we will see in the next A Processors section, being LTEX a command line system, it even has to rely on an external text editor. The Computers have often been (and currently are) aforementioned target difference and theA LTEX used as typewriters, i.e., to edit text. Text editing lack of a built-in text editor turns useless those has evolved: from the simple words juxtaposition endless discussions about “Is it LATEX better than with no hyphenation, monolingual spell check, Word?”, as in OETIKER et al. (2018, pp. 3–4) (that monospaced font and fixed spacing (between words shows pros and cons), KNAUFF and NEJASMIC and lines) and dimensions (for the document) to (2014) and BLANCO (2015) (that advise Word) or character kerning, spell and grammar check in BLOCH (2017) (that explains why LATEX should be 8 A A rsTEXnica Nº 28, Ottobre 2019 Introduction to LTEX better). It is pointless to compare two programs produce text lines that where not too empty or that perform different, though partially superim- too full before seeing them cast into lead. posed, tasks. It is pointless to measure how fast We are now entering the world of an old, yet users input text and tables when the hardware way too powerful typesetting system: TEX, and is not the same and you do not specify who had its almost universally used “hi-level access gate”: the autocorrect activated or not: this is a word LATEX. processors tool—not typesetting systems’—that might increase the speed performance of users. It 3 T X As a Non-Interactive is pointless to measure how sharp users input text E and tables and not to measure how close to the Typesetting System and a original is the final document look (but KNAUFF Programming Language and NEJASMIC (2014) mentions that). TEX is a typesetting system designed and pro- WPs care about the fact that every line in a grammed by Donald Knuth at the Stanford Uni- page is good and well hyphenated, regardless of versity. Its first release came to light in 1978. In the page quality; typesetting systems not only care KNUTH (1999, chap. 1) the author explains why he that a line is more than good and correctly type- decided to write such a program: the first volumes set and hyphenated but should care of the page of his masterpiece The Art of Computer Program- quality too. TEX only issues a page when the page ming, first typeset with Monotype, needed tobe is typographically the best possible according to updated but that technology had been dismissed TEX’s internal rules. At last, Word does not care of in the USA. The available technology was unable A documents back-compatibility, unlike LTEX. More to get at least a similar result so he decided that a on that topic in section 4. program able to typeset books and a program able to generate the needed fonts had to be written: METAFONT 2 Interactive and Non-Interactive they where TEX and . Typesetting Systems TEX is a non-interactive typesetting system, so the users have to instruct it—program it—on how Despite the majority of users just know interac- to output the desired document. Once the program tive1 programs, there are still many programs that is ready, T X compiles it and—hopefully—outputs are not interactive. Typesetting systems are no ex- E the document (in DVI format). ception and probably the most representative non- T X programming language provides the users interactive programs and troff andE T X. Interactive E (and visual) typesetting systems are QuarkXPress, about 900 commands, tests and so on. It is straight- Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Publisher, Scribus, and forward to realize that TEX is extremely powerful, the very ancient (and dismissed) Ventura Publisher yet not much user-friendly in the way we currently and Aldus PageMaker. intend that friendliness. The main difference between interactive and The DVI documents needed one more step to be non-interactive typesetting systems is that an in- ready for a printing service: a DVI→PostScript con- teractive one shows you in real time the result of version had to be performed. The program dvips your actions and your actions are usually dragging accomplished that task. and dropping boxes in a visual interface, while a Years later pdfTEX started outputting PDF doc- non-interactive program accepts whatever action uments. you want but shows you a result only when you These programs have been partially superseded instruct it to show. So, if you delete a sentence in by X TE EX and LuaTEX: both support TTF/OTF an InDesign text, you immediately see the modi- fonts and LuaLATEX adds to TEX a powerful yet fied text; if you do the sameE withT X, you will simple programming language: Lua. only see the result after compiling the new text As you may figure out,E T X is not a program and opening the resulting DVI or PDF. that can be installed by itself, without any compan- Just to roughly cut the users set, graphic de- ion program or file. Indeed it comes with packages signers consider more productive using interactive known as distributions. Despite several distribu- programs; programmers think otherwise and it tions have been available for different operating sys- seems to us that programmers are closer to old tems, it is now common to see that three distribu- linotypers, who had to rely on their experience to tions polarized users: MikTEX(https://miktex. org/) on Windows systems, TEX Live (https: 1. This concept is often mistaken with visual. It is different //www.tug.org/texlive/) on Linux systems and because “visual” means that you see fancy interfaces, use the mouse or other similar input devices; “interactive” means that MacTEX(https://www.tug.org/mactex/) on the program immediately reacts to your actions and shows Apple computers. While you can refer to the re- you updated results while you keep working.