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--- latex [February 15, 2026 at 22:46] – yanevskiv
+++ latex [May 14, 2026 at 11:38] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+# LaTeX
+**Latex** (stylized as $\LaTeX$) is a markup language used to create scientific papers. It's the language used to produce PDF documents, like the ones you'll commonly see on [arXiv](https://arxiv.org/).
+Latex has a simple declarative syntax that looks like `\command[opt1][opt2]...[optN]{arg1}{arg2}...{argN}`. That is to say, most commands start with a backslash `\`, followed by command name + arguments given in square or curly braces. For example, `\textbf{Hello}` makes a bold text **Hello** while `\textit{World}` makes an italic text *World*. "Bf" stands for "bold font" while "it" stands for "italic". Arguments in curly braces `{ ... }` are mandatory, while arguments in square brackets `[ ... ]` are optional.
+Latex documents have the extension `.tex`. Unlike HTML -- which you can view in any browser you can't readily view latex documents until you compile them with a latex compiler. The most common compiler is `pdflatex`. This compiler turns `.tex` documents into `.pdf` documents. PDFs can then be viewed by a PDF viewer or in the browser.
+The following is a minimal latex document.
+```latex
+% Compile: pdflatex main.tex
+% Result:  main.pdf
+\documentclass{article}
+\begin{document}
+Hello world!
+\end{document}
+```
+You can now open `main.pdf` and see the result!