L^ATEX

L^ATEX  is a software system for typesetting documents. It is in common use in many disciplines, including Computer Science, Mathematics and Physics, for publication quality typesetting of documents and mathematical formulae.

Formulae are expressed in L^ATEX as textual command strings. As with all command string based systems, the learning curve is steep and many different commands must be learnt to describe the expression and its layout. Even long time users of L^ATEX can find it frustrating as they still have to occasionally refer to books to find out how to achieve the result they desire.

The example formula given at the beginning of this section is entered into L^ATEX as:

\int^{20}_{10}{\frac{4x^3}{\ln{x}}}dx

For longer and more complex formulae, the nesting and balancing of braces can become difficult. It also gets becomes difficult to visualise the formula from its command string. For example, the formula already presented in Section :

$$f(a) = \frac{1}{2\pi i} \int^{2\pi}_{0}{ \frac{f(e^{i\theta})... ...e^{i\theta})} \frac{d}{d\theta} (T^{-1}(e^{i\theta})) d\theta}$$

is entered into L^ATEX as:

f(a) = \frac{1}{2\pi i} \int^{2\pi}_{0}{
\frac{f(e^{i\theta})}{T^{-1}(e^{i\theta})} \frac{d}{d\theta}
(T^{-1}(e^{i\theta})) d\theta}