One important benefit of L aT eX is the separation of document content from document style: once you have written the content of your document, its appearance can be changed with ease. Of course, there are types of documents or publications where L aT eX doesn’t shine, including many “free form” page designs typically found in magazine-type publications. Overall, L aT eX provides users with a great deal of control over the production of documents which are typeset to extremely high standards.
To produce a visible, typeset document, your LaTeX file is processed by a piece of software called a TeX engine which uses the commands embedded in your text file to guide and control the typesetting process, converting the LaTeX commands and document text into a professionally typeset PDF file. LaTeX works very differently: instead, your document is a plain text file interspersed with LaTeX commands used to express the desired (typeset) results.
However, LaTeX’s mode of operation is quite different to many other document-production applications you may have used, such as Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer: those “ WYSIWYG” tools provide users with an interactive page into which they type and edit their text and apply various forms of styling.
L aT eX (pronounced “ LAY-tek” or “ LAH-tek”) is a tool for typesetting professional-looking documents. 15.3 Packages available on Overleaf: Introducing TeX Live.15.2 Finding information about packages: CTAN.5 Including title, author and date information.