Introduction

(Last modified: )

We will describe the basics of HTML and LaTeX. You can read more about these in the chapters posted at the address above, click here.

I prefer to use Emacs as a text editor, because it has special support for these (and many other) languages. But any text editor is fine, as long as it does not introduce extra characters in the file.

Here is some basic customization for Emacs.

• Linux
  • the terminal (a.k.a. shell, console)
  • the file system: ls, pwd, cd, mkdir, rm, cp, mv, more, less
  • running jobs in the background: &, ^-Z, ^-C, jobs, fg, bg
  • file permissions: chmod
  • aliases: e.g., alias rm 'rm -i', asks for confirmation before removing a file
  • manual pages: man, info
  • if there is a major problem
  • printing: the department printer is in Room 644, and is called rm644
    (it is probably the default printer for most applications)
    In a terminal, do:
    • "lpq" to see the printer (and the queue),
    • "lprm JOB-NUMBER" to remove one of your jobs from the queue.
• The Internet
  • browsers:
    • use the icon, or
    • mozilla, firefox
  • e-mail: thunderbird, alpine, webmail, etc.
  • from outside
    • remote access: ssh
    • file transfer: scp
  • "important" sites
    • UH library
    • MathSciNet (reviews and math papers), arXiv at arxiv.org or front.math.ucdavis.edu (preprints), etc.
• Text editor
  • Emacs (multifunctional, worth getting used to)
    • customize
    • mouse or keyboard commands
    • shell, other extended commands
    • auctex (for LaTeX)
  • many others, e.g. kile for LaTeX
• HTML, CSS
  • Examples:
    • an example with the basics and its rendering
  • viewing the source code
  • creating a home page:
    • should be located in the directory ~/.www, ~/public or something similar
    • the file that is opened by default is index.html (maybe Welcome.html works too)
    • set access permissions: all execute the directory, all read the files
  • CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): the good way to format your web-page
• LaTeX, BibTeX
  • Examples:
    • a typesetting example and its rendering
    • a short paper which exemplifies how the numbering and referencing work, and its rendering
    • a LaTeX manual; more recent versions etc. are listed under Internet help in the LaTeX section.
  • other examples
  • sample exams
  • slides: beamer, etc.
  • BibTeX
• Math softwares
  • matlab; a very similar (and compatible) free software is octave, www.gnu.org/software/octave/index.html
  • math, mathematica (for symbolic computations)
  • R (for statistics)
  • etc.
• Windows stuff
  • ooffice