What is ?

TeX is an excellent computer typesetting system invented by Dr. Knuth at Stanford University in the late 1970s. It is mainly used in the fields of math and scientific papers. (Math problems on this homepage are also written with TeX.) One of the reasons for that is you can write a math or scientific paper beautifully with TeX, because TeX can place the word at anywhere you like.  Second, TeX is not a WYSWYG system (WYSIWYG means What you see is what you get.), so you don't have to think about  layout. Third, TeX is free, you can get it through Web. On top of that, TeX has a strong macro commands which you can arrange in any way you like, and it will help you with writing .

Let me talk about macros a little bit. Look at the big logo "TeX" above, where you can see "E" is lower than the other characters T"and "X". In addition,  the blank between "T" and "X" is very narrow. Of course it takes great efforts and time to place words like this, but you can write anything you like if you don't mind taking a time. The lexibility of TeX is amazing, TeX can fix the alphabets or numbers by the length of 1/65536pt, and 1pt is 0.35mm! However , it sure takes time. However,
TeX has a strong macro system. You can define a macro command so that you can place the word by just one command instead of 10 or more commands. Take the "TeX" for example, original commands for "TeX" is like this;
T\kern- .1667em\lower .5ex\hbox{E}\kern -.125emx
However, the macro command for this is only one command: "/TeX" . You can type the same word  by only one command.
In addition, users can define their original macro commands, and making macro commands is so interesting that lots of people have become crazy about this. I , for one, was really crazy about this for the first three month after I started TeX. I was making macros for 24 hours a day.


TeX is  useful not only for mathematicians or teachers but also for general users, especially for English speakers who are concerned with a beautiful outlook writings. Usually with a word processor (please correct me if I'm wrong) the end of a line are not lined with other lines (like this article). However, thanks to the great hyphenation system, TeX can line both left and right sides of a writing. In addition, it's very easy if you want a just simple general writing, such as letters, journals, not the math papers. Only you have to do is just type what you want to write down. TeX can hyphenate it automatically. However, you may find TeX difficult to handle at first, because TeX is not a WYSIWYG system like other word prpcessers. Nevertheless, it's worth trying. I bet after 1 week ,you can't write without TeX.  If you want more details and precise information about TeX, please contact TUG (TeX Users Group)



TeX Users Group
Back to the TeX Top
Back to the Homepage