LaTeX is a widely used document markup language and a document
preparation system for high-quality typesetting. Based on Donald E. Kruth’s TeX
typesetting, it is used for producing scientific and mathematical documents of
high typographic quality. However it is quite different from the word
processors such as MS Word or LibreOffice etc. which uses the WYSIWYG approach.
Getting to the basics of it, every LaTeX document must contain
the following 3 components (every thing else being optional):
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\end{document}
Here the 1st line tells LaTeX the type of
document (article, report, book, letter), and the body of the document must
occur between \begin{document} & \end{document} commands. Any text after \end{document} is ignored.
Few commonly used commands: \pagestyle (controls page numbering
and headings), \title, \author, \date, \section (creating separate sections) \tableofcontents
etc.
Math Mode: LaTeX uses a special math mode to display
mathematics, as LaTeX typesets math notations differently than the normal text.
Special environments have been declared for this purpose, 3 commonly used
environments in math mode :
2. displaymath environment – displayed formulae are separate from the main text [ TeX shorthand $$....$$ ]
3. equation environment
An example:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
$$ \frac{d}{dx}\left( \int\limits_{0}^{x}
f(u)\,du\right)=f(x)$$
\end{document}
will produce :
Math symbols : the symbols in Math formula
fall into different classes : Ord (simple/ordinary), Op (prefix operator), Bin
(binary operator), Rel (relation/comparison), Open (left/opening delimiter),
Close (right/closing delimiter), Pun (postfix/punctuation). It comprises of
Latin Letters, Arabic numerals (0-9), Greek letters are
simple symbols. Example of Greek letters in LaTeX are \Gamma, \alpha, \beta
etc.
Other alphabetic symbols: \complement, \partial, \daleth etc
Misc. Simple Symbols: \#, \&, \angle, \infty, \exists, \forall etc.
Binary Operator Symbols: *, +, -, \cdot, \div, \pm, etc.
Relational Symbols: <, =, >, \approx, \gg, \ll, \prec etc.
Relation Symbols (arrows): \leftarrow, \Leftrightarrow,
\rightarrow, \curvearrowleft, \curvearrowright etc.
Relation Symbols (Misc): \parallel, \backepsilon, \because,
\in, \mid, \nparallel, \sqsubset, \subset etc.
Cumulative Operators: \int, \oint, \prod, \sum, \bigcap,
\bigup, \bigsqup, \bigvee, etc.
Punctuation: . ; / | , ; \colon : ! ?
Pairing delimiters: (, ), [, ], \lbrace, \rbrace, \langle,
\rangle, \lceil, \rceil, \lfloor, \rfloor etc.
Non-Pairing Extensible Symbols: \backlash, /, \vert etc.
Extensible vertical arrows: \uparrow, \Uparrow, \downarrow
etc.
Accents: \bar{x}, \vec{x}, \dot{x}, \hat{x}, \acute{x}, etc.
Named Operators: \cos, \cot, \det, \lg, \lim, \ln, \log,
\inf, \dim, \max, \min, \sin, \sup, \tan,
Another Example:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
$$ \left(1+x\right)^n = 1 + nx + \frac{n\left(n-1\right)}{2!}x^2
+ \frac{n\left(n-1\right)\left(n-2\right)}{3!}x^3 +
\frac{n\left(n-1\right)\left(n-2\right)\left(n-3\right)}{4!}x^4 + \ldots $$
\end{document}
will produce:
is :