A Primer for TEX Users

Abstract

TEX is our latest text formatter. It is designed specifically for technical text (e.g., mathematics), and produces much higher quality output than other formatters previously available. Donald Knuth designed TEX at Stanford and published a manual TEX and METAFONT New Directions in Typesetting with "Everything you need to know about TEX." The original people who used TEX here set up their own macro files but now Daniel Brotsky has developed a standardized macro package which does the types of formatting usually desired. This macro package will be referred to as TBase in this document. The aim of this memo is to help you create your first TEXT file, explain the basic commands for formatting (showing some examples) and clarify possible areas of confusion, giving pointers to the more technical documentation available for the advanced user. It is advisable for someone planning to use TEX to get copes of: INFO;TBASE INFO, NTEXLB;TBASE ORDER, NTEXLB;SAMPLE PRESS, NTEXLB:SAMPLE TEX and a copy of Knuth's manual. This document tries not to duplicate information already explained in the materials just mentioned - only to clarify some areas and set the information forth in an easily digestable manner.