A Minimal LaTeX Demonstration

This is a minimal example of using LaTeX to typeset a small document.

Install LaTeX from tug. Download these two files:

• latexdemo.tex: example LaTeX input file.
• latexdemo.bib: example bibliography file.
  To run the demo type these commands on the command line:

  latex latexdemo
  bibtex latexdemo
  latex latexdemo
  latex latexdemo
  dvips latexdemo
  ps2pdf latexdemo.ps
  open latexdemo.pdf
  

  That's all gathered together in:
• mk: A Unix script that runs LaTeX and other programs to create a PDF. These files are generated:
• latexdemo.log: This is the log file from LaTeX that gives information, including error reports.
• latexdemo.aux: This file contains information used by LaTeX, normally you don't look at it.
• latexdemo.bbl: This file contains information used by LaTeX, normally you don't look at it.
• latexdemo.blg: This file contains information used by LaTeX, normally you don't look at it.
• latexdemo.dvi: This is the device independent format used by LaTeX. It can be viewed with the xdvi program. To make it into postscript one types:

  dvips latexdemo

• latexdemo.ps: This is the PostScript result. You can look at it using ghostscript, or Previewer on the Mac OS X. To convert to PDF:

  ps2pdf latexdemo.ps

• latexdemo.pdf: This is the PDF (Portable Document Format). You can view it using Adobe Reader. I usually use Skim (on Mac OS X) since one can set it to automatically update when the PDF changes.
• latexdemo.html: This web page

• It's a little simpler to use pdflatex which produces PDFs directly (script: mkpdflatex).

  pdflatex latexdemo
  bibtex latexdemo
  pdflatex latexdemo
  pdflatex latexdemo
  open latexdemo.pdf
  

  However, pdflatex uses pdfs instead of EPS for figures and cannot use the powerful pstricks. (See the wikipedia entry on PdfTex.)
• Under Linux you may be able to use 'xdg-open' instead of 'open'.

Schneider Lab
origin:    2011 Feb 01
updated: 2011 Dec 20