# What I Did While I Was Not Blogging: LaTeX

During the Ice Storm week I learned the basics of LaTeX.

LaTeX is a document preparation system. By writing a type of markup you can pass it through the LaTeX formatting engine, which, in turn, utilizes Knuth’s TeX language, and it will format it and you can output it to a variety of formats, like PDF.

Update: I’ve created a LaTeX reference page.

Check it out:

 \title{A LaTeX Demonstration} \begin{document} \maketitle When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. \vskip 1 cm $\frac{(x+2)^2\cdot(x-2)^{-3\rho_larry}}{x^2+3b+c}$ \vskip 1 cm We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. \end{document} 

… and it comes out like this …

I thought that maybe I would try typesetting my math homework, because that’s what LaTeX really excels at, and it seemed like a good project to learn the technology.

I wrote this in TextMate with its LaTeX bundle. It was very handy; yet another thing LaTeX does well!