TeX showcase - TeX Users Group

The TeX showcase

This is the TeX showcase, edited by Gerben Wierda . It<br>contains extreme examples of what you can do with TeX, the<br>typesetting engine from Donald Knuth, world famous mathematician, computer<br>scientist and above all well known for TeX. I will try to keep this showcase<br>small. For remarks on submissions, see at the end of this document.

For an introduction to TeX, please visit the TUG "Getting Started" page, and<br>especially the section on<br>the first LaTeX document, and in this section the PDF<br>file of example first document with embedded explanation. I want to add to<br>this:

You can compare a Word Processor (e.g. MS Word) setup to a TeX setup as a<br>Camper (or RV) versus having a house and a car. The Camper is for everything:<br>you can live in it, you can drive with it and you can look at it. The Word<br>Processor is like a Camper: it does editing, formatting/typesetting, and<br>displaying. It is not excellent at any of these functions, but the combination<br>is pretty neat. In a TeX setup, these functions are separated, like with<br>having a house and a car. You have a separate editor of your own liking to<br>edit, and you have TeX to do the actual typesetting/formatting. Especially<br>when using macro packages like LaTeX or ConTeXt, you write<br>conceptually and not visually and you leave the visual aspects to<br>the TeX engine, which (generally) produces a PDF file. You need another<br>program again (a PDF Viewer like Acrobat or Preview on the Mac) to read or<br>print the result. Word Processors have improved on their typesetting<br>algorithms, but they still do not reach the quality level of TeX just yet (I<br>am writing this on Jan 2, 2014). TeX still produces the best looking typeset<br>text and mathematical formulas on the planet. And writing conceptually instead<br>of visually is really nice. You can concentrate on content and you do not have<br>to worry about layout.

Some things are, however, difficult to do in TeX. Mostly these are the<br>kind of things where you want very fine-grained control over exact positioning<br>of images, wrapping around these images, etc. You can do this in TeX, but it<br>is often (very) cumbersome to get it right and changes may be a lot of work.<br>For this, people use (very expensive) Desktop Publishing (layout) setups, like<br>Adobe InDesign (which generally also have better typesetting algorithms than<br>Word Processors, (almost) matching the quality of TeX) in text (though not in<br>mathematical formulas). TeX, on the other hand, is free. The showcase shows<br>(amongst other things) the limits of what people have been able to do with TeX<br>in the 'special effects' category. Some of these are really TeX-specific<br>tricks (e.g this example (PDF), which only works<br>because TeX is a programming language, zoom in as far as you can, don't try to do this in MS Word, InDesign etc.).

In this showcase, you will not only find examples of material prepared<br>with TeX proper, but also with macro packages like LaTeX, ConTeXt and with<br>related programs like METAPOST. And though TeX is a typesetting language, you<br>will find graphics and even an MPEG movie.

Showcases are mostly PDF files. Some PDF files contain tricks that only<br>work in certain PDF-viewers, e.g. they might contain automatic changes in the<br>page that work in certain versions of Acrobat and only when certain<br>preferences are set. The descriptions will contain special instructions if<br>any.

Most examples come with some sort of source. These sources are not<br>guaranteed to compile, they are only there for visual inspection. Some<br>may compile, but some may have parts missing.

Some of these examples were prepared using proprietary fonts or<br>software that must be purchased. For a discussion of font usage with<br>TeX, including a sampler of available free fonts, please see this<br>separate font page.

One word on the sections. These are generated automatically from a database<br>and their titles speak for themselves. The exception is the section Yannis<br>Haralambous. Yannis is famous in the world of TeX for his work on<br>typesetting several languages (like Greek and Hebrew) with TeX. He donated a<br>series of samples. The Hebrew and Syrian fonts are bitmaps, they might not<br>look perfect in all circumstances.

Index

Yannis Haralambous<br>Mathematics<br>Dynamic documents<br>Languages of the world<br>Graphics<br>General Typesetting<br>Miscellanous

Yannis Haralambous

Case (click for document)SourceWhat it is<br>No source availableAn Arabic text written by Idris Samawi Hamid, with full Arabic vowelization.<br>The font used is Monotype Naskhi with hundreds of additions designed by<br>Atelier Fluxus Virus.

No source availableThe beginning of the Book of Genesis, in Hebrew. Typesetting and font are from<br>the Tiqwah system, by Yannis Haralambous. The critical appartus is taken from<br>the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. The font is designed in Metafont<br>(this explains the bad display by Acrobat).

No source availableA page from the journal Inscriptiones graecae. The Greek font used is<br>New Hellenic, with additional...