LaTeX is a document preparation system that produces very nice looking pages. It is especially well suited for the production of technical and scientific documentation. The “secret sauce” in LaTeX is the underlying TeX typesetting system and its complex algorithms for describing symbols and how to place them on a page. Modern typesetting systems use many of these discoveries.
LaTeX uses a markup language in order to describe document structure and presentation. LaTeX converts source text, combined with the markup, into a high quality document. Web pages work in a similar way: the HTML is used to describe the document, but it is your browser that presents it in its full glory – with different colors, fonts, sizes, etc. For this reason documents that were developed using any variant of TeX also include the “code” listing needed to output the .pdf document.
Content:
- LaTeX for Linguistics: I used LaTeX to create a document that displays many of the unique packages needed when writing about Linguistics.
LaTeX Typesetting Features Used in Linguistics
LaTeX source file: LaTex Typesetting Features Used in Linguistics_Listing
- LaTeX for Mathematics: I created a LaTeX document illustrating its use for Linguistics first, only because I know the subject matter better. LaTeX is however best known for its use as a typesetting system for texts using extensive mathematics symbols. In fact the creator of TeX is the legendary Donald Knuth, computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. Mathematicians already know about SageMath for its computational environment. For purposes of this blog it is worth mentioning that SageMath integrates Latex beautifully to help create documents, often for academic journals. I hope to report more on this later.
LaTeX source file: Riemann Zeta Function Project_Listing
- XeTex / XeLaTeX Support for World Scripts: This blog from Share LaTeX provides the best summary of all the LaTeX variants I have found. XeLaTeX offers excellent support for world scripts, which dovetails with my interest in languages. It is too much detail to go into the relationship between XeTeX and and XeLaTex, but the above link will explain a bit. XeTeX itself has an intersting history, which I will cover in a blog. I created the following document to show XeLaTex’s support for virtually all world script styles.
LaTeX source file: XeLaTeX_World Script Examples_Listing