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Academic & Research Computing
Getting Started with LAT
E
X
Try it!
Before getting into the details of the L
A
T
E
Xlanguage, you can get a feel for
what it’s like to process and view a L
A
T
E
Xfile by trying out both methods on
the simplest of the files you copied,
basic.tex
.
Double-click on
basic.tex
.Your editor/shell should open the file. We’ll
assume that you are using WinShell and that your previewer is Windvi.
Try out method 1
1. Run L
A
T
E
Xby clicking on the L
A
T
E
Xicon on the toolbar.
2. Preview the resulting DVI (device independent) file by clicking on the
DVI icon on the toolbar. The Windvi previewer will open. You can
zoom in or out to choose a viewing magification.
Leave the DVI window open while you return to your editor to make
changes; the window will refresh when you rerun L
A
T
E
X.
3. If/when you want to print (probably not now), do so by using GSView:
From WinShell, click the DVIPS icon. After
dvips
runs, click the
GSView icon to open the
.ps
file. From the File menu, select Print....
Try out method 2
1. Run pdfL
A
T
E
Xby clicking on the pdfL
A
T
E
Xicon on the toolbar.
2. Click the PDFView icon on the toolbar to view the PDF output in
Acrobat Reader. If you want to rerun L
A
T
E
X, you will have to close the
file first (just close the file, not Acrobat Reader) because AR will not
allow you to write on an open file. After rerunning L
A
T
E
X, open the file
again to view your changes.
3. To print, select Print... from Acrobat’s File menu. Before printing, be
sure Page Scaling is set to “None” in the Print window.
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