README file for Latex Mini-Tutorial, by Michael Corral.

===========================================================================

Copyright (C) 2011 Michael Corral.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is included in the file gnufdl.txt, and is also
available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html.

===========================================================================

------------
INTRODUCTION
------------

This README file is part of the zip file latex_tutorial.zip, which contains
the following files:

* README
* latex-tutorial.tex
* hello.tex
* hello.pdf
* oski.jpg
* mathquiz.tex
* gnufdl.txt

The tutorial is the file latex-tutorial.pdf. It is of course a very brief
introduction to using LaTeX; there are many far more comprehensive guides
and tutorials on the subject. I created this tutorial in the hope that
someone who just wants a quick start to using LaTeX would be able to read
it and start writing short documents (e.g. students typing up their homework,
teachers writing exams or quizzes), then refer to more complete
documentation as needed. Personally, I found "The LaTeX Companion," 2nd ed.,
by Frank Mittelbach and Michel Goosens, invaluable when I first learned LaTeX
four years ago. Unfortunately, that book is not free. There are also many
online forums (e.g. http://www.latex-community.org/forum/) that can provide
assistance.

-----------
COMPILATION
-----------

The requirements for compiling the tutorial are:

* A fairly recent LaTeX system (e.g. MiKTeX 2.8 or higher, TeX Live 2009
  or higher).
* The following LaTeX packages:
  - xcolor
  - graphicx
  - amsmath
  - fancybox
  - fancyvrb
  - fontenc
  - textcomp
  - hyperref
  - breakurl
  - xspace

To create the tutorial, keep all the files extracted from the
latex_tutorial.zip archive in the same directory, then do the following:

* If you are using MiKTeX, open the file latex-tutorial.tex in the TeXworks
text editor that comes with MiKTeX 2.8 or higher, then hit the green arrow
button in the menubar. Depending on your setup, you may be prompted to allow
MiKTeX to install some extra packages not part of the basic MiKTeX install.
If so, allow MiKTeX to install those packages. After all the necessary packages
have been installed, the latex-tutorial.pdf file should be created.

* If you are using some other LaTeX system, then follow the procedures for
creating a PDF file directly from a .tex source file. For example, in TeX Live
systems you would open a terminal window in your operating system and run this
command : pdflatex latex-tutorial.tex
That will create the latex-tutorial.pdf file.

-------
LICENSE
-------

The tutorial is released under the GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL),
Version 1.3. You are free to copy, modify, and distribute the tutorial and the
accompanying source files in the latex_tutorial.zip file; you do not need my
permission. The only condition is that you must abide by the terms of the GNU
FDL, which is included in the latex_tutorial.zip file (as gnufdl.txt). For the
vast majority of people, abiding by the terms of the GNU FDL will not be a
problem; if you just want to use the tutorial, print it out, make copies, pass
it around, etc, then you can do so freely. Only when you want to make
modifications to the tutorial and put those modifications under your name will
you have to take the license into consideration. There are rules for that
spelled out in the GNU FDL, which you should read if modification is your
intent. Those rules were designed to make sure that your modifications are
available under the same terms as the original source.

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FEEDBACK
--------

You can send me feedback about the tutorial by email at this address:
mcorral@mecmath.net
