Mathematics Department
Penn State University
August, 2003
Most printed mathematics is now typeset using TeX or LaTeX. You will need to learn at least one of these languages while at Penn State in order to write your dissertation. This tutorial makes no attempt to teach these languages; it only describes how to typeset, view, and print documents that you have already written.
A TeX or LaTeX document is written in plain text using any editor. If you don't know which one to use, I would recommend the pico editor because it is easy to use and mimics the mail editor in pine. Once you have written a TeX document, you need to typeset it to create a dvi file. This file, which is not human readable, contains a description of the rendered image of each page of your document. To typeset a file written in TeX, you use the command tex filename.tex. To typeset a file written in LaTeX, you use the command latex filename.tex.
If you have created a dvi file, or someone sent you one by email, you can view the file by typing xdvi filename.dvi.
To print a dvi file, use the command dvips filename.dvi. The file will print to the printer associated with your current computer.
Here is an example LaTeX exam file which you can experiment with. When you save it as a file, you need to give it the extension ".tex" in order for LaTeX to process it.
Try this: Save the example LaTeX file, typeset it, and view it.
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