Lecture notes for CS306, Practicum in TeX

These lecture notes from CS306, Practicum in TeX, were written by the author of this page. They are in PostScript format, so they can be viewed only under a windowing system. The units are numbered 2 through 13; lecture 1, a brief history of typesetting technology and terms, is not represented here. This course is based on the Plain TeX format, and should be adequate for most anyone who wants to write a thesis or dissertation.

• Unit 2: The TeX production cycle. TeX input conventions. Punctuation. Control sequences.
• Unit 3: Changing fonts. Defining fonts. Dimensions.
• Unit 4: Boxes. Glue. Changing the dimensions of the page.
• Unit 5: Modes. Math mode: displays; sub/superscripts; roots, underlines, and overlines; operators and spacing; non-italic items; math accents; fractions.
• Unit 6: Math: summation and integration; delimiters; fine control of spacing; dots.
• Unit 7: Math: alignments; equation numbers; aligned equations.
• Unit 8: Tables: simple tabs, equal and unequal column sizes.
• Unit 9: Tables: The \halign construct.
• Unit 10: Tables: rules; text paragraphs within tables. Programming features: macros without arguments.
• Unit 11: Programming features: macros with arguments; delimited arguments. Running heads and footers.
• Unit 12: Programming features: uppercasing and lowercasing; how to typeset any character; count registers; arithmetic; dimension registers; skip registers; box registers.
• Unit 13: Programming features: conditionals; true/false switches.

To print hard copies of this material on the Birch printer (in Speare 5), use the commands below. There are probably about 40 pages total.

    % cd ~www/docs/tcc/help/dtp/tex/ps
    % lpr -Pb l2.ps
    % lpr -Pb l3.ps
        ...
    % lpr -Pb l13.ps

Last updated: 1995/12/19 00:39:07 UT
URL: http://www.nmt.edu/tcc/help/dtp/tex/cs306.html