Beginning LaTeX short course
September 22, 2007
Mark Senn

Beginning LaTeX short course (October 7, 2004 version)

All commands in this section were done on a ECN Sun computer. I'll add instructions for other computers later.

The PDF file for the presentation is latex-beg.pdf.

The refs.bib BibTeX data file and sample.tex LaTeX input file were used for the example. You will also need the PUlogo.eps file for the Purdue logo---that file is a copy of the "PC EPS for print use" all black logo available from http://www.pmc.purdue.edu/pages/downloads/seals_logos_download.html.

Don't worry. You don't need to do all the following commands after every time you change something. I'll write more about that and how to have the commands run automatically later.

To process the files I did

latex sample
bibtex sample
latex sample
latex sample
to produce a sample.dvi file. A .dvi file contains device independent information that, with the right software, can be printed on many different output devices. This is the sample.dvi file I got.

To preview the sample.dvi file that was produced by the above commands on the screen I typed

xdvi sample

Usually one can just print output by typing, for example,

dvips sample
but that didn't work on my computer! It doesn't print anything and doesn't let anthing else print.

For some, very odd reason I haven't had until now in 20 years of using LaTeX---that I suspect is due to a problem with the Purdue logo---I had to do

dvips -o sample.ps sample
ps2pdf sample.ps
acroread sample.pdf (and do File==>Print from there)

Revised: September 22, 2007
Created: October 11, 2004