Hello and welcome to this Course this course
is about Latex. Latex is written as Latex
but pronounce as Latek. But you can pronounce
it however you like. So what is Latex. Latex
is an opensource
Why do we care about Latex, what is so special
about Latex. Latex is special because the
quality of the document we get
out of it is much superior and much of high
quality than any of its competitors such as
word and it's free.
You don't have to pay anything it's free,
its open source.
Then why most people don't use latex.
well in my opinion, because of two main reasons.
Number one Latex is not WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG means
What you see is what you get.
But in Latex
You do not get what you see get Latex document
contains the text we want to produce.
And also some of the commmands which we have
to put in order to produce that text.
And the second is that its very hard to learn.
There is a learning curve involved and most
people they don't bother to learn too much.
Most scientists and researchers and engineers
they use lead not only because Latex has excellent
built-in
fonts but also the mathematical equations
and the algorithms, and the diagrams which
we can produce in Latex are much superior
and of
much higher quality
I started using Latex when I started my Ph.D.
at the University of New South Wales in 2003
and a research paper was my first document
that
I produced in Latex and most conferences and
most journals and even universities they have
their templates in Latex because
they know that Latex produces a true professional
document.
So it's very hard to copy exact those fonts
and typesetting in word or any word processor
and they just give you template, you just
put your
text inside and the document you produce exactly
seem as the conference and the university
demands
Also one of the capability of Latex is that
you can embed JavaScript or any other programming
macros into
the document.
For example when I make my quizzes I put java
script into my PDF file. After they finish
the quiz they can check
what are the correct answers and what questions
they have not answered Correctly So it's much
easier
than having a database based solution and
also the ability of Latex to handle large
documents is superb you can publish
books and although this capability is now
included in Word as well.
But Latex can handle all the changes for you.
So for example if you insert any subsection
or section or table or figure inside your
your document.
So Latex will update all the numbering for
you.
So it's very easy. Actually you have to do
nothing from this.
And Latex has three three components.
One is the editor in which we type.
The second is the latex distribution or the
Latex itself. and the third is that document
viewer in which we view the
document For example the PDF viewer or the
DVI or some other viewers
You write that a document first, then you
build the document using the Latex distribution
And so you also use certain packages packages
that do some specific functionality.
For example there is a package for geometry.
There is a package for making diagrams. There
is a package for making algorithms.
A lot of people are working on these packages
they develop a package and then it becomes
an open source. And you can take advantage
of this. Latex produces documents of highly
professional quality.
And I I almost always use latex. In this course,
I will walk you through step by step how to
install all this Latex system
and how to use it. How to use it for equations,
how to use it for graphics, how to use it
for making diagrams.
Thanks for watching and I hope that this introductory
video will make you excited about this course.
And I'll see you inside the course.
