What is Latex?

What is Tex

A typesetting program for professional quality documents.

especially those containing a lot of mathematical symbols.

Runs on multiple platforms.

Comes in PlainTeX, LaTex, AMS-LaTeX, etc.

Latex

Latex is an extension of TeX

Latex is the most popular Macro packages with a set of functions that makes the TeX language more friendlier and easier. 

developed in 1985 by Leslie Lamport

Provides many convenient features such as automatic cross-references, footnotes, glossary, table of contents, and bibliographic features.

LaTeX is typeset like

It also encourages authors to separate the content of the document from the presentation aspects.

Many style files are available that provide more features.

In a LATEX environment, LATEX takes the role of the book designer and uses TEX as its typesetter.

But LATEX is “only” a program and therefore needs more guidance. The author has to provide additional information to describe the logical structure of his work. This information is written into the text as “LATEX commands.”

Why is it different from word processors

High typeset quality

Easy to include math formulas

Source file format is not bounded to a particular OS or platform

Latex implementations exists for all platforms (DOS, Windows, Unices,..)

Latex is free

Word processors are WYSIWYG

With WYSIWYG systems, authors often generate aesthetically pleasing documents with very little or inconsistent structure. LATEX prevents such formatting errors by forcing the author to declare the logical structure of his document. LATEX then chooses the most suitable layout.

Very few bugs

Good for large documents