Latex is a typesetting system based on τ ε χ, which was developed by American computer scientist Leslie Lamport in the early 1980s.

Using this format, users can give full play to the powerful functions provided by TeX even without typesetting and programming knowledge, and can generate many book-quality printed materials in a few days or even hours.

TeX has different implementation versions on different hardware and operating systems. This is just like C language. Different operating systems have different compilation systems, such as gcc under Linux and Visual C++ under Windows. Sometimes, there are several TeX systems in an operating system.

At present, the common TeX system under Unix/Linux is Texlive, and there are MiKTeX and fpTeX under Windows.

CTeX refers to the abbreviation of CTeX Chinese suite, which is a simple installation program made by packaging MiKTeX and some commonly used related tools, such as GSview and WinEdt, and configuring the Chinese support part. After installation, it can be used in Chinese.

Extended data

The relationship between TeX and LaTeX:

The most basic TeX program is only composed of some primitive commands, which can complete simple typesetting operations and programming functions. However, TeX also allows you to define some more complex advanced commands with these original commands.

LaTeX is a format in TeX and a macro language based on TeX. In other words, every LaTeX command will actually be converted into several or even hundreds of TeX commands in the end.

However, ordinary users don't need to know about complicated connections. Just as we can realize many functions with few commands if we use some compiled function libraries and templates when programming, LaTeX defines many commands and templates according to people's habit of typesetting articles, and we can get beautiful typesetting results quickly through these commands and templates.

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