LaTeX is a free software package created in 1985 by the American computer scientist Leslie Lamport as an addition to the TeX typesetting system. LaTeX was created to make it easier to produce general-purpose books and articles within TeX. Because LaTeX is an extension to the TeX typesetting system, it has TeX’s ability to typeset technical documents that contain complex mathematical equations. This feature made LaTeX popular with scientists and engineers.
Producing a LaTeX document begins with a text file containing content that is tagged with special LaTeX codes used to indicate how the text will be styled. When the file is run through a LaTeX processor, typeset pages are produced. Because LaTeX typesetting requires wrapping text in complicated computer codes, it has a fairly steep learning curve. Although there are now software programs that help automate the creation of LaTeX documents, a working knowledge of LaTeX is still desirable for this kind of typesetting.
LaTeX was one of the first typesetting programs able to produce complex mathematical equations. Over the years it has been used to typeset many science, mathematics, and engineering journals. The American Mathematical Society (AMS) even has its own set of extensions, called AMS-LaTeX, that its contributors use for its journal. But as desktop publishing programs such as Quark Inc.’s QuarkXPress and Adobe Systems Incorporated’s FrameMaker became more capable of producing complex mathematical expressions, LaTeX became less popular.