What is LaTeX?

In the late seventies, tired of the poor typographical quality of many scientific documents, Donald Knuth, of Stanford University, invented T_eX (pronounced by some Tex, by other Tech with a Scottish or German tech), a free document preparation system to produce beautiful documents on any computer platform. In the eighties, Leslie Lamport developed L^aT_eX (pronounced by some Lay-Tex) to make the use of T_eX easier.

L^aT_eX has been immensely popular in the scientific world for years but is more and more used in social sciences and, yes, even in religious studies. It is used to produce critical editions of ancient texts, interlinears, full books in exegetical studies, etc. Most theological journals, papers, and books could easily be written and produced in L^aT_eX

Why use L^aT_eX?

• L^aT_eX allows the separation of form and content (up to a point I would say)
• beautiful typography (see The Beauty of L^aT_eX)
• can produce any type of document, from simple letters to books (see The T_eX showcase, Books in Humanities)
• indexing
• automatic handling of bibliography (see BibDesk)
• ancient and modern languages
• columns (snaking and parallel)
• unicode
• tables
• footnotes and endnotes (mixed in one document and in multiple threads)
• critical editions of ancient texts (see Ledmac)
• graphs, figures, pictures
• colors
• slides for presentation (see Beamer or Powerdot)
• macros
• etc.
• Oh yes, let me say it again … it's free!

As a matter of facts, some documents can only be produced in L^aT_eX.

L^aT_eX is available for use on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

For introductions to L^aT_eX see

• The L^aT_eX Project home page
• L^aT_eX Wikibook