LaTeX

LaTeX (/ˈlɑːtɛk/ ^ⓘ LAH-tek or /ˈleɪtɛk/ LAY-tek,^[2] often stylized as LaTeX) is a software system for typesetting documents,^[3] based on TeX. LaTeX provides a high-level, descriptive markup language to utilize TeX more easily: TeX handles the document layout, while LaTeX handles the content side for document processing. Because the plain TeX formatting commands are elementary, it provides authors with ready-made commands for formatting and layout requirements such as chapter headings, footnotes, cross-references and bibliographies.

LaTeX was originally written in the early 1980s by Leslie Lamport at SRI International.^[4] The current version is LaTeX2e, first released in 1994 but incrementally updated starting in 2015. This update policy replaced earlier plans for a separate release of LaTeX3, which had been in development since 1989.^[5] LaTeX is free software and is distributed under the LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL).^[6]

Like TeX, LaTeX started as a writing tool for mathematicians and computer scientists, but even from early in its development, it has also been taken up by scholars who needed to write documents that include complex math expressions or non-Latin scripts,^[7][8] such as Arabic, Devanagari, and Chinese.^[9]