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Home > Research Help > Engineering > LaTEX > What is LaTEX?
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|  | Donald Knuth, a mathematician and computer scientist, developed the TeX typesetting system "for the creation of beautiful books--and especially for books that contain a lot of mathematics." If you pick a random mathematics book published in the last five years, it was most likely formatted with TeX. | | Leslie Lamport, a computer scientist, created LaTeX as a high-level interface to TeX. Technically, LaTeX is a macro package that loads on top of TEX. The advantage to using LaTEX, instead of TeX, is that LaTeX takes care of many stylistic details automatically. Also, many people have written add-on packages for LaTEX that solve common typesetting problems. | LaTeX is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is not a word processor. LaTeX helps authors concentrate on getting the content right, instead of focusing too much on the appearance of the publication. You can use LaTex for: - Typesetting journal articles, technical reports, books, and slide presentations
- Control over large documents containing sectioning, cross-references, tables and figures.
- Typesetting of complex mathematical formulae.
- Advanced typesetting of mathematics with AMS-LaTeX.
- Automatic generation of bibliographies and indexes.
- Multi-lingual typesetting.
- Inclusion of artwork, and process or spot color.
- Using PostScript or Metafont fonts.
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