A New Dark Art

I was up till midnight last night attempting to get a character into a table. It took about an hour of fiddling around but I eventually got it to work. There wasn’t really anything special about the table, it had one row and three columns. The character in question was the logical symbol for implication, it kind of looks like a double-bar arrow.

One of my classes this semester requires that I use a software package called LaTeX to submit all of my work for the class. LaTex is supposedly pronounced "la-tek" but Dawn informs me that I’m a damn fool if I pronounce it anyway besides "latex" (we scientist and engineers do have our fun). LaTeX is a typesetting markup language that helps better reproduce equations than typical WYSIWYG word processors (Word). The quote on Wikipedia has a very high opinion of who routinely uses LaTeX:

LaTeX is most widely used by mathematicians, scientists, philosophers, engineers, scholars in academia and the commercial world, and other professionals.

Does that leave anyone out? It sounds like everyone must be using it. If you’re not using LaTex you’re probably a looser.

All kidding aside, I’ve been hearing about LaTeX for over a year now, usually in the context that it makes life easier to express things that Word makes difficult. I didn’t realize that the inverse was equally true. LaTeX is not a WYSIWYG (what you see if what you get) program. Instead you add lots and lots of markup code to your text and then you get to compile your document and then you get convert it into something you can actually read (like a PDF). Obviously there are a few programs that will help compile and convert the file for you…but the fact remains that you don’t get to see what it looks while you’re typing; you have to stop and hit a compile button and then open a PDF to peak at what you’ve actually done.

I’m sure you’re all wondering what the markup looks like. That’s only natural. I’ll give you a taste of what it takes to make a table:

\begin{tabular}{ c c c }
\hline
p & q & p \wedge q \\
\hline
\end{tabular}

That’s what I was trying to compile last night…but don’t try that - it won’t work. It will complain. The problem is the \wedge, which tells LaTeX that I want the symbol for logical conjunction (and operator). Perhaps due to diminished late night mental capacity or shear obscurity it took me quite awhile to realize that I had to wrap the special character in $’s in order to get it to work: $\wedge$... Duh.

When I was regaling Dawn with the story of my fun night this morning she nodded and simply replied “It’s amazing what you can get things to do if you’re willing to wrap them in dollar signs.”