I have lot of confusion regarding TeX and LaTeX. What I have understood is TeX is basically macro instructions, and LaTeX uses that macros or we can say TeX is extended to LaTeX.  But, really not very clear. Can I get a simple def of TeX and a example of TeX?  Is the TeX program executed in a same way like LaTeX? That is creating .tex file and then converting into .dvi and pdf?
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I know LaTeX and I've heard that LaTeX is a set of macros in TeX. But what does it exactly mean?
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I have a problem with adding text into a LaTeX document. I have a LaTeX document about LaTeX and I need to insert some code snippets. I need to add "\usepackage{musixtex}" as a text, which should be displayed as a text. Do you know how?
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In the spirit of a free-form Friday on StackOverflow, I'd like to know if I should consider learning ConTeXt.  What got me into LaTeX way back in 1994 was having structural markup that made longer documents easier to write.  What got me into XeTeX was being able to use my Mac's fonts just like I could in a word processor.  What makes ConTeXt users passionate about it or at least willing to forsake LaTeX?  Edit: Thanks for all the answers and great discussion in the comments.  The whole page deserves a green check.  Success! I am now interested in ConTeXt.
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I am confused about what TeX and its offspring (LaTeX, pdfTeX/pdfLaTeX, e-TeX, ConTeXt, LuaTeX, etc.) are.  Some, like LaTeX, seem like add ons to TeX (maybe a change to the eyes and mouth, but not stomach). Others, like pdfTeX, seem like changes to the underlying system (i.e., a change to the stomach).  Is there a good reference that explains the differences and the evolution?
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I know I can use the macros \TeX and \LaTeX for typesetting the names of TeX and LaTeX (including the necessary vertical alignment trick).  But how am I supposed to typeset "TikZ"? (I am asking because I'd like to mention TikZ in the Colophon of a book).
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I know there are some command-line applications like pdflatex that can help me to compile a LaTex document from C#.Net (using the System.Diagnostics.Process class) .   I wanna know that what's the best command-line tool for compiling a TeX document ?
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I have heard about PDF  PDF/A (for archival) and PDF/X (for printing). How to generate LaTeX documents like that?  I'm also interested in answers with plain TeX and ConTeXt, and hopefully with both pdfTeX and XeTeX engines.
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Since TeX and LaTeX can print out any text, it should be possible to write a self-replicating document, i.e., a document that is typeset as a PDF/DVI of itself. Have you seen something like that?
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When I run  $ latex my_doc.tex   and   $ pdflatex my_doc.tex   it works, and when I run  $ pdftex my_doc.tex   it doesn't work.  The thing is I noticed that both LaTeX and pdflatex commands are symbolic links to the same pdftex executable. That is,  $ which latex pdflatex pdftex   yields  /usr/bin/latex /usr/bin/pdflatex /usr/bin/pdftex   and   $ ls -l /usr/bin/latex /usr/bin/pdflatex /usr/bin/pdftex   yields  /usr/bin/latex -&gt; pdftex /usr/bin/pdflatex -&gt; pdftex /usr/bin/pdftex   So how is it possible that commands being symbolic links to a same executable do not behave in the same way ?  Thanks.  I have Ubuntu 12.10 with TeXLive-full 2012.20120611-4 installed.
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I'd like to learn and use LaTeX on Ubuntu.  What packages do I need?  What is the best editor for LaTeX code on Ubuntu for a new LaTeX user?  I'd also like the ability to see the code in one pane and the results in a second pane, if possible -- not necessarily WYSIWYG, though.
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Under TeX, when I write a line too long, it prints a fat black box at the end of the line.  That is probably a feature, but I dislike it.  How to turn that OFF? Is there a command-line option or something else?   I usually use LaTeX, but I have a complicated file which happens to be plain TeX.
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I am a programmer and as part of a website I need to be able to take LaTeX source files and compile them, then return the pdf to the user. This seems dangerous since a malicious user could e.g. read and write files on server this way. Is it possible to 'clean' a LaTeX file so it's safe to compile or is it too complicated?
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I know that hardly any information is passed to the PDF when a .tex file is compiled.  But is there a tool that can convert a PDF document back to (La)TeX?
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Is there any tool that can convert Latex documents to HTML documents, so that all math is presented with ?  (Obviously, it is fairly easy to hack together a quick Perl script that is able to do a crude conversion, but I am interested in a bit more robust solutions — at least it should get all cross-references right automatically.)
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I have a question regarding LaTeX .. I have a table from an excel file which I print screened and posted as a figure in LaTeX. However, I want to make it a table. Problem is, the particular table has a lot of values in it so making it into a table manually is pretty tedious.  Is there a way to be able to reference an image as a table instead?
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I need to copy a table from a pdf file to my LaTeX document. I know I have to do it by hand but still don't understand how to create a table with LaTeX.
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I am trying to configure TeXworks to run the following chains:   latex with automatic dvi viewer opening latex+dvips with automatic ps viewer opening   Essentially, I want to learn how to configure TeXworks to create my own chains of commands possibly with a long list of executables that are usable and commands used within TeXworks. That is, what can go under Program and Arguments.  For example, from the post:  if I want to compile via latex+dvips+ps2pdf, I would need to use  -e $latex='latex -synctex=1' -e $dvips='dvips -P pdf -t a4' -pdfps $fullname   with latexmk as the Program as shown below:    When I analyze the pdfLaTeX settings its much simple than the one shown above. Any clarifications on how to create these settings and explanation or tutorials to understand TeXworks at this level will be very helpful. Is latexmk the only Program which can be used? I have tried changing it to latex.exe or the sort but no good results.