Course
The text is the major reference of the course I teach (almost) annually at King's College, London. The course as presented is divided into a LaTeX element and a BibTeX element. The text contains a number of Exercises. The Solutions to the exercises will be added.
- LaTeX course text (pdf): suitable for duplex printing
- LaTeX course with hyperlinks (pdf); suitable for on-screen viewing
Sample text
Once downloaded and unpacked, the 'main' file will have to be run two or three times in order to resolve the references and cross-references.- chip3 files (zipped): download this file first; it should then be sufficient to click/double-click on the file for it to unpack the component files and create a couple of directories. Best to put it all in its own directory so that they don't clutter up any of your other directories or folders. While I think I have managed to include all the necessary files, it's possible I missed one or two.
Some images
The following images are used in the course text. They may be useful if you want to experiment with the insertion of graphical objects. Start the download process by right clicking on the link.
- Mannikin: a png image (courtesy RNLI)
- RIB: a jpeg image
- Horses RS: a pdf image (my former RS200)
- Tsunami from Uniras: a pdf file (thanks to Ian Chivers)
- Tsunami from Uniras: a Postscript file (thanks to Ian Chivers)
- Tsunami from dislin: a pdf file (thanks to Ian Chivers)
- Tsunami from dislin: a Postscript file (thanks to Ian Chivers)
Useful links
- mathtran.org: an excellent site for translating (La)TeX expressions into something which can be inserted into a web page.
- www.ctan.org: the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. The repository of almost everything there is to know about TeX and LaTeX, together with all the support materials you could ever hope for.
- www.tug.org: the home of the TeX Users Group.
- uk.tug.org: the home of the UK users group.
What is TeX anyhow?
TeX is a special-purpose programming language that is the centerpiece of a typesetting system which produces publication quality mathematics (and surrounding text), available to and usable by individuals.
That makes it sound difficult to use, but mostly TeX and its 'friend' LaTeX are straightforward. They both have the huge advantage that they are freely available (for free!), will work on any operating system (these days that pretty much means any flavour of Linux, Microsoft something or other, and the Mac OS), and produce exactly the same output on any output device (OK, so pdf does that too, but TeX started the ball rolling, and indeed, often produces pdf itself). Since it is free there isn't much money in it for support. However have a look at what the excellent guys at River Valley Technologies are up to.
A much fuller explanation of TeX and its chums can be found at www.tug.org/whatis.html.