so this lecture is purely an introductory lecture about latex and a littele disclaimer
that you might not understand many things in this lecture but this is my promise that
you will understand each and every thing in detail when I explain this in my later lectures
for now if you don't understand anything, just bare with me.
so, any typsetting in latex, any formating which we want to do in latex, we need three
things.
First, we need somthing where we can write our text plus some commands to typeset the
text to format that text.
so, for that we need an editor where we can write some text plus the typesetting commands
and the second thing we need is some program, some packages which can convert that text
into beautiful looking high quality professional document, a typeset document, a high quality
document.
So, we write in the editor, then we compile here.
This set of packages, this collection of packages is called Latex distribution, also called
Latex toolbox and it has three things in it, compileres which compile our document which
is kind of a program because it has text command, so this document will have, so text which
we want to put in our document plus some commands which will be used to, to format the document,
the way we like, so this is the purpose of the Latex to format the document in a professional
beautiful looking document.
Distribution has three components, the first is the compiler which understands these commands
and understands what we are trying to say to the program, what type of formating we
want, so these are compilers.
Some of the examples of compilers are pdf taxify.
This is a compiler, I am just giving you some names but we will be explaining this later.,
so what is pdftaxify.
It converts our file which is a tex document which will have an extension of .tex, Tek
or Tax. we will input this file into this compiler and we will get a pdf out of it.
So therefore it is called pdftaxify.
It converts a TEX document to a PDF.
The second thing these packages have, they have some support programs.One example would
be Bibtex and what this does?
This puts citations in a research paper or in a book.
At the end of the book, you might have seen some citations.
So this program puts citations in our document.
Then a lot of packages, a lot of packages.
so what are these packages, these packages are basically adons.
So they add some extra functionality, some extra styles and some extra functions to our
document because Latex document can have some functions, some interactive functions, some
javascripts, some coding some macros and some extra styling, tables of many types, text
of many types, some fancy headers, fancy footers, some diagrams, some graphics, a lot of things.
So these packages they add this extra functionality.
we use these packages as and when required basis in our program and let me tell you the
command, we put usepackage.
This is a command which we put in our tex file and we tell our distribution that we
are using this package, so our distribution sees if the package is already on our computer,
if not it will install the package from the internet.
This distribution will take care of this package.
what are our options for this latex distribution.
There are two main options we have.
One is called Miktex and the other is called TexLive.
SO this is a little comparison between Miktex and TexLive.
So, Miktex is normally by-default.
When you install Miktex, it will install some standard packages first and then if you use
some other package in your program then it will install that package.
It will ask you for permission and it will install it.
I'll show you this in my next video how it works.
While in TexLive, the standard installation will install all the packages available currently
available on the internet which will be around 5GB.
So, it depends which type of installation you really want.
I would prefer MikTex, because I like on the fly packages.
The second point is that if you have an individual PC then Miktex is better for you because you
are in complete control of your internet, your password everything, so whenever you
like, you can install package, there is no problem but if you are in a server environment
where other people are using it and may be your server administrator is sometimes not
available and you need some package and that package is not available in Miktex, so then
it might be a problem.
Miktex might not be able to install the package.
In that case Texlive will be a better solution because you already have all the packages.
The third comparison point is that this Miktex was developed for Windows from the beginning,
from the very beginning, so it has a complete Windows background, no Linux, Unix, so if
you are a Windows user like most then I will prefer this.And if you use Linux, then you
can go for TexLive.Because the good thing about Texlive is that it is a multi platform.
You can, you can switch the platform between Linux and Windows whatever you like.
NowTthis point is very important, in Texlive, there is a policy of Must-freeze policy.
After one year, they get some time to get a new version of texlive.
So there is a certain break between the old version and the new versionThere is a freeze
for some time, so what it means is that after that new version, you will have to do the
installation again while in Miktex, the update is not so often, The new version comes but
it depends when it comes just like any other software.
The last point is that slightly more packages for Miktex.
I have read somewhere on the internet that thesis package is not available in texlive,
you can double check, it might be available now.
So, these are some of the differences.
So these are some of the differences we have between MikTex and texlive.
So you can decide whatever you like but it does not matter, both will work fine and any
of these editors will work fine.
Now coming towards the pdfviewer.
So, normally we use Adobe Acrobat Reader but this Sumatra is a fantastic PDF viewer.
Very simple, lightweight and especially if you are like me, I use Winedt and with Winedt,
this is the best choice.And another thing about the PDF viewer is that some of these
text editors, they have their pdf viewer inside like this TexStudio.
Texstudio has an internal PDF viewer while Winedt has an external PDF viewer.
What it means is that when you make a PDF in WinEdt.
This is WinEdt, it will open another program, any of these whichever you have like Foxit
is another choice.
So, this is a program, when you compile, it will open another window and it will open
a viewer, your Acrobat Reader or whatever you have in this window.
While in Texlive, for example this is your program, so it will make two portions.
This is your program, it will open an internal PDF viewer and it will show you the output
of your program, your beautiful PDF in itself, inside the Texstudio.
So this is another factor of choice when deciding which one you want to use and another factor
of choice could be the Syntax highlighting and i'll explain this later.
Question is that if we first have to write our program in editor, then why I am mentioning
the distribution first because first we havev to write a program, then compile it and then
view it then why this order because this is the order of installtion.
You must install the latex distribution first, then the editor, then the viewer if you don't
have one because otherwise, you might have to set some options in your editor and which
at the beginning stage could be difficult for you.
So the better thing is just to install the latex distribution first, so that when you
install editor, it will fill out all the fields about the path and everything where it will
be finding the bin file for example or where is the executable file for PDF viewer for
example or DVI viewer.
So these were some of the basic information which I wanted to tell you but we will be
discussing all this in detail in our next videos.