Programs



LaTeX

We use standard LaTeX, also known as LaTeX2e. This is a program that is an amalgamation of the two major steps to build on TeX and expand its functionality. The first effort was the creation of AmS-TeX which was largely the work of Michael Spivak and it provided many new constructs for complicated mathematics. The second was the creation of LaTeX due to Leslie Lamport who designed who focused on the logical design of a document by introducing numerous environments and the idea of automatic cross-referencing.



BibTeX

BibTeX is a program used to create versatile bibliographies. Here is all you need to kno to get it up and running.
  1. You need to manually create a file whose extension is bib. This file contains the biblio entries.
  2. A typical entry for a book looks as follows:

    @BOOK{***,
    author={...},
    title={...},
    publisher={...},
    year={},
    }

  3. There are a number of option fields you can use. I have included only the mandatory ones
  4. A typical entry for an article looks as follows:

    @ARTICLE{...,
    author={...},
    title={...},
    journal={...}
    pages={...},
    vol={...},
    year={...},

  5. Once you have created the .bib file then you can reference the bibliographic entries in your document using \cite{***} where *** is whatever label you used (see @BOOK above).
  6. Once this .bib file is created and placed in the same directory as the source file "file.tex", you run bibtex simply by typing "bibtex file" without the quotes.
  7. When BibTeX has run succesfully, you will end up with 3 files. The .bib file that you created; the .blg file which is the bibliographic log file used to communicate error messages; and finally the .bbl file which contains all the citations in a form that LaTeX typesetting. If you don't use BibTeX then this latter file is what you need to create manually. Both the .blg and .bbl files are created by BiBTeX.
  8. After running BiBTeX, you need to re-run latex two more times in order to get all the citations and cross-references in sink.
  9. BibTeX becomes more useful the larger you bibliographic database gets.
  10. You do not have to worry about typing all the periods to abbreviate journal names. BibTeX will do this for you.
  11. In the preamble of your document you need to include the two commands \bibliography{...} with the root name to the .bib extension in the argument and \bibliographystyle{alpha}. The latter command simply tells LaTeX to use the "plain" bibliographic style.


makeindex

Makeindex is easier to use than BiBTeX. Here's a brief overview:
  1. Include the command \usepackage{makeidx} in the preamble of your article
  2. All you need to do is include a command \index{...} nearest as possible to the item you wish to index.
  3. If you wish to create a subindex to an already indexed item then you use the command \index{item!subitem}.
  4. To run makeindex on your source file "file.tex", all you do is type the command "makeindex file" without the quotes.
  5. You need to include the command \printindex in the document where you want the index to appear.




latex2html

To see what latex2html gives you in the case of number.tex see number2html