A number of students have asked questions about the mechanics behind the software I use to process their electronic submissions. This page is designed to answer those questions.

My document processing is based on the TeX (pronounced "tech") system that was developed by Dr. Donald Knuth. Dr. Knuth got fed up with his papers and books looking crummy when they reached their final printed form. In response, he developed a document processing system know as TeX. A nice story about Dr. Knuth can be found here.

A set of macros have been written for TeX by Leslie Lamport which provide a document markup language that is a bit easier to used than raw TeX. These macros have become fairly standard and are know as LaTeX. You should be able to use all standard LaTeX commands in your lab submissions.

There are many additional packages that can be used as add-ons to LaTeX to make it even more powerful. I make use of a number of these in my processing. In addition, I have created a simple package of my own which adds some specialized commands to facilitate in placing my comments in your reports.

More recently, a graduate student at Masaryk's University, Han The Thanh, has developed a version of LaTeX, called PDFLaTeX, which produces PDF documents. I use this to generate the PDF files which I send back to you.

Software

Below is a list of the software packages which I use to process your submissions. There are a number of other implemenations of LaTeX, many of which are freely available on the web. All of the packages listed below are free and will work on a Win32 platform.

• MiKTeX -- A Win32 implemenation of TeX/LaTeX/PDFLaTeX/etc... It comes with all of the executables already created so you don't have to do any compiling to make it work. MiKTeX also includes many additional LaTeX style packages that I use. These style packages include:
  • Hyperref for generating active links;
  • Graphicx for including jpg, png, tif, and pdf figures;
  • Color for adding color; and
  • Fancyhdr for creating headers and footers.
• teTeX -- A Unix "implementation" of TeX/LaTeX/PDFTex/PDFLaTeX packages. Binary distributions for a number of platforms (including Linux) are available. I have not used it, but I imagine that it is similar to MiKTeX.
• The source files for PDFTeX/PDFLaTeX are available.
• VTeX -- A free Linux port which produces PDF output, but I have not used it.
• listings -- A LaTeX package that formats source code for many different languages (including C++). You will also need the lstdrvrs file.
• ctdefs.sty -- My own style file which defines commands specificly for use in grading your lab reports.

There are many other implemenations of LaTeX available for a number of different platforms. In fact, the source files for many of the implemenations are available, so you can port them to any platform you wish.

Documentation

There are many sources of documenation available for LaTeX.

• The MiKTeX distribution comes with a doc directory filled with documentation for many of the specific components included in the package.
• A number of books have been published.
• A search of the web will reveal many sites dedicated to providing information on how to use LaTeX.
  • If you are serious about learning LaTeX, I would suggest beginning with A Not Too Short Introduction to LaTeX2e.
  • LaTeX: from quick and dirty to style and finesse
  • Advanced LaTeX
  • LaTeX Navigator
  • LaTeX2e Reference
  • An electronic comp.text.tex has plenty of LaTeX related discussion -- a great place to ask questions

Assuming you have a version of PDFLaTeX and the supporting style files correctly installed on your system, you should be able generate PDF versions of your reports. Before processing your report with PDFLaTeX, you will need to add:

\documentclass[landscape]{article}
\usepackage[hw,landscape]{ctdefs}

\pagestyle{fancy}
\begin{document}
\LARGE

\Gfin{}{100}

\end{document}

The following search engine may help you find more info on the web: