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From: soh@andromeda.trl.OZ.AU (kam hung soh)
Newsgroups: aus.tex,comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: LaTeX
Keywords: Here I go again...
Message-ID: <1991May19.014801.15447@trl.oz.au>
Date: 19 May 91 01:48:01 GMT
References: <1991May15.233531.28208@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>
Sender: news@trl.oz.au (USENET News System)
Organization: Telecom Research Labs, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 56

krooglik@ecr.mu.oz.au (Alexander KROOGLIK) writes:

>  OK, I am finally getting somewhere with TeX!! But no-one told me just
>HOW complicated this damn software is!!

>  Anyway, on to the main issue here. I have an Amiga 2000 and I want to
>know how one uses LaTeX. I have the full complement of files and don't
>envisage any problems in this respect. I have asked for A4 formatting
>files, and many thanks to the people who helped me, but now I need to
>ask the obvious question : "HOW DO I USE LATEX?".

Leslie Lamport's book is a good reference, but a poor tutorial.  I
found the best way to learn LaTeX was to put off doing any tricky
things until I had to.  My big problem initially was mistaking the
backslash for the escape character (which it is NOT).  Aside: the good
point about these text processing languages (including [tn]roff) is
that I stopped worrying about how every page looked like and
concentrated on my writing.  I made myself a template suitable for most
reports and assignments, and just uncommented anything I needed
(apologies to real LaTeX experts).  Below is my rough-and-ready LaTeX
template:

\documentstyle[a4wide]{article}

%\title{}
%\author{}
%\date{}
\begin{document}
%\maketitle

\section{}

% Some math
%\[
%\]

% Some tables
%\begin{tabular}{|l or r or c|} \hline
% & ... & ... & \\
%\end{tabular}

% Some lists
%\begin{enumerate}
%\item
%\end{enumerate}

% Some bibliographies.  Use \cite{the item} in document.
%\begin{thebibliography}
%\bibitem{}
%\end{thebibliography}

\end{document}

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Soh, Kam Hung      email: h.soh@trl.oz.au     tel: +61 3 541 6403 
Telecom Research Laboratories, POB 249 Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia