Running L^ATEX

$\bullet$

Steps for the Creation of a document :

1. Write a text file (using a simple editor) with a file extension tex, e.g. simple.tex, which contains the text and additional formatting commands.

2. Translate the text with the command

   latex simple.tex

   This creates (among others) a file simple.dvi, which contains the layouted document in the L^ATEX-specific dvi (``device independent'') format.

3. Display the document with

   xdvi simple.dvi

   or another dvi viewer program and go back to 1 to apply corrections, if necessary.

4. Generate a postscript file simple.ps with

   dvips simple

   which can be printed with a Postscript printer or displayed on the screen with ghostview.

$\triangleright$

Coming from a WYSIWYG system (``What You See Is What You Get'') like Word, this procedure appears to be rather complicated. The advantage is that the system can analyze the whole document to create an almost perfect layout.