TeX/LaTeX

Introduction

The chief goal of the Department was the production of critical editions of ancient texts on mathematics, mathematical astronomy and astrology. Dr. Pingree stated that any edition made in the Department should be comprised of 'camera-ready copy'. The only known software that could produce such copy, while easily handling the languages used in these editions (some of which contained both left-to-right and right-to-left languages in the same line of text), as well as the mathematical, astronomical and astrological symbols entailed is Donald Knuth's TeX.

Advantages of TeX

• All languages in TeX are ASCII based
  • It is easy to process TeX files with Perl, the Java Regex package etc.
  • You don't have to wait for a Unicode standard to be adopted for your favorite language or symbols - there are TeX packages available for just about everything
• TeX is stable over time
  • Documents written in Microsoft Word in the mid 1990's in Classical Greek, for example, using keyboard macros are now all but useless, thanks to changes in fonts, changes in versions of Word, changes in proprietary formatting methods etc.
  • Documents from that same time period written in TeX are not only editable under current releases of TeX, but will produce exactly the same output today as they did 15 - or more - years ago (TeX was "frozen" by its creator in 1991 for just this purpose)
• There are TeX packages for all languages in which the Department worked
• TeX is completely free.

TeX Packages Used

• IbyGreek - for typesetting Classical Greek
• ArabTeX - for typsetting vowelled and unvowelled Arabic, including English transliteration
• Edmac - for typesetting critical editions with plain TeX.
• Ledmac/LedPar - an extension of Edmac for use with LaTeX
• Sanskrit Packages - more to come
• Planetary/ Astrological Symbols

TeX Distributions

• MikTeX (Windows)
  • Works seamlessly with a wonderful shareware user interface WinEdt
• teTeX (Unix/Linux)
• OzTeX (Macintosh)

TeX Resources

• A Gentle Introduction to TeX
• The TeXBook (Addison-Wesley, Reading,Massachusetts, 1984, ISBN 0-201-13488-9)
  • *The* book about TeX by its creator, Donald Knuth (Amazon)
• TeX for the Impatient (Amazon)
• LaTeX: A Document Preparation System (Addison-Wesley Professional; 2 edition ISBN 0201529831) (Amazon)
• Guide to LaTeX (4th Edition) (Tools and Techniques for Computer Typesetting) (Addison-Wesley Professional; 4 edition ) (Amazon)
• Xemacs - A powerful text editor for various programming languages, including TeX/LaTeX
• GNU Emacs - ditto
• AUCTeX - a set of lisp extenstions for the above Emacsen that integrate the editor with an underlying installation of TeX
• Directions for installing MiKTeX, AUCTeX and Emacs on Windows
• WInEDT - an intuitive shareware interface for MiKTeX. I have been converted to it from the Emacs/AUCTeX combination.
• The Comprehensive Tex Archive Network webpage (CTAN)
• The homepage of the TeX Users Group (TUG)

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