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A Guide to Writing Your Thesis Using LATEX
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Step 1: Getting LATEX and a LATEX Aware Editor

LATEX is not a word processor, it is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents but it can be used for almost any form of publishing. LATEX encourages authors not to worry too much about the appearance of their documents but to concentrate on getting the right content.

Because LATEX source files are just ordinary text files, any text editor can be used to edit them, but it is important to have a LATEX aware editor. A LATEX aware editor can do things like syntax highlighting, spell checking, and automatic formatting, as well as run LATEX on the source files then update the document in a viewer such as Acrobat Reader.

Below are links to what you need to get started on various operating systems. Check out the LATEX Project website for more information.

Linux

Your system distribution or vendor (ie. Ubuntu, Fedora, etc...) has probably provided a TEX system including LATEX and a LATEX aware editor. Check your usual software source for a TEX package, or check out the LATEX Project website for detailed information. All of the Linux systems in the ELE Department already have a complete LATEX system installed.

Two popular choices for a LATEX aware editor in Linux are

  • kile - a user friendly LATEX editor for the KDE desktop environment. This also works fine with other desktop environments including Gnome.
  • emacs with auctex - an extensible package for writing and formatting TeX files in Emacs.
If you are unfamiliar with both editors, kile might be the better choice, but if you are already an emacs user, auctex is nicer than the native LATEX mode in emacs. Both of these editors may already be installed on your system.

Windows

The best choice for windows is the proTeXt system, which includes

  • MikTeX - an up-to-date TEX implementation for the Windows operating system
  • TeXnicCenter - a feature rich integrated development environment (IDE) for developing LATEX documents on Microsoft Windows
as well as a few other components. Download proTeXt.

MacOS X

A full TEX system including LATEX, called MacTeX, is available for installation with i-Installer. Download MacTeX.