This tutorial will walk you through the process of using easylatex.

Please let us know if any part of this tutorial is confusing or incomplete. You can get support for EasyLatex via the mailing list easylatex-devel@lists.sourceforge.net 

Most of the tutorial is for Unix-like systems. In theory, easylatex might run under Windows, but it's never been tested.

0. Pre-requisites
Before you even install easylatex, you need to have the program "Perl" installed. You don't need anything else if you will be running EasyLatex from the directory it comes in (in that case, skip to step 1); but if you plan to move to to another directory (say, /usr/local/bin), you'll need to install the Perl module "Getopt::Declare" installed.

For instructions on installing this Perl module, see the web page http://easylatex.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?PerlModuleInstallationTutorial . Remember, you don't need to do this if you will be running EasyLatex from the directory it comes in.


1. Downloading EasyLatex
Follow [this link], and download the latest version of the "easylatex" package.

2. Installing EasyLatex
First, unzip EasyLatex.

tar -xovzf easylatex.tar.zip

Next, go into the directory that you just unpacked:

cd easylatex

Now, run: 

./quickInstall.pl  

That's it! EasyLatex should now be installed.

You might want to put the file "easylatex.pl" in your $PATH, or put it in some location like /usr/bin, so that you can run it from anywhere.

3. Writing an EasyLatex source file

Using any word processor, enter the following file and save it as "demo.txt". This file is just to show you some of the capabilities of EasyLatex; you don't have to enter all of it (or any of it) if you don't want to.

The identity matrix is the matrix for which a_ij = 1 when i = j, and 0 everywhere else. For example, in three dimensions, I = [1 0 0 ; 0 1 0 ; 0 0 1].

Here is a column vector: [0 1 0]'.

x \mapsto y

1/3


% note: you can still use normal LaTeX in an easylatex file! for example:
\begin{eqnarray*}
a + b &=& c
\\ a &=& c - b
\\ \begin{array}{ll} 
1 & 2 
\\ 3 & 4
\end{array}
\end{eqnarray*}

Here are some equations which easylatex will automatically align:

1 + 1 = 2
1 = 2 - 1
0 = 2 - 2

For easylatex to deal with a series of naked equations, like in the last three lines, there must be either an empty line, or the end of the file, both before and after the equations. So, the following lines WON'T be automatically aligned:
1 + 1 = 2
1 = 2 - 1
0 = 2 - 2

4. Compiling the easylatex file to postscript
Now, execute the file easylatex.pl like this:

./easylatex.pl -ps demo.txt

That's all; now you should have a file called demo.ps in your directory. You can view it with

gv demo.ps