(Donald E. Knuth)
Everything began with the composition language TeX (pronounced tech) designed by Donald E. Knuth for typesetting mathematical and scientific articles and books. It is capable of handling complex mathematical formulas as well as text. The language itself and the plain text source files are platform independent, which is a great advantage. Unfortunately the TeX usage is rather difficult.
This changed when Leslie Lamport built LaTeX (pronounced lah-tech) on TeX's foundation. LaTeX commands are much easier to use. Documents are now divided into logical units (abstract, sections, subsections, theorems, bibliography, etc.), whose placement and formatting is controlled by LaTeX. A mentionable feature is the automatic numbering system. If used correctly, you can change your document at will and LaTeX automatically renumbers the sections, theorems and equations in your article, and rebuilds the cross-references! This is invaluable if you are writing large scientific papers.
But LaTeX is not like your normal word processor, where you can change the content and immediately see the result. First the source file has to be compiled, which creates a DVI file ("DeVice Independent") that can now be viewed using a previewer like YAP. Sounds tricky, doesn't it? But it isn't. And you will get used to it. For learning the syntax, I refer to the literature paragraph below.
Most Unix systems provide a LaTeX system and an appropriate editor by default. The situation is different for Windows systems. Here you will need to install them separately. You will find links to the necessary software in the MiKTeX and the WinShell paragraph respectively.
Now to the crucial question: "Is it worth all the effort?"
Well, I would say "Yes! Without any doubt!". But you don't have to
believe me. Just take a mathematical article (with lots of formulas
please) and type it both in LaTeX and a
traditional word processor (e.g. Microsoft Word with Equation 3.0).
Then compare the results and answer the question for yourself...
MiKTeX
WinShell
Literature
[1] George Grätzer, Math into LaTeX, 3rd Edition, Birkhäuser - Springer
[2] Elke and Michael Niedermair, LaTeX - Das Praxisbuch, 2nd Edition, Franzis
[3] Herbert Voß, PSTricks, 2nd Edition, Lehmanns - Dante
[4] Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, LaTeX - kurz & gut, 2nd Edition, O'Reilly
Templates
Important: the source files are designed for compilation with pdfLaTeX!
