Sources and Licence #
Original work #
This course is adapted from The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX, A5 edition, by Tobias Oetiker, Marcin Serwin, Hubert Partl, Irene Hyna, Elisabeth Schlegl, and contributors.
The consulted PDF identifies itself as nightly version 7.0, revision 357b1a686cf242f03b80a4720c8fcde03876adf3, dated 12 May 2025. It contains 357 PDF pages. The upstream project and its source are available in the lshort repository.
Original copyright notice:
Copyright © 1995–2022 Tobias Oetiker, Marcin Serwin, Hubert Partl, Irene Hyna, Elisabeth Schlegl and Contributors.
The original work is released under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or, at your option, any later version. Its code examples are separately dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0, as stated on its copyright page.
This adaptation #
This modified web edition was prepared for TeXPage on 18 September 2026. The adapted teaching text and accompanying source are distributed under GPL-3.0-or-later, without warranty. This notice applies to this course and its supplied assets, not to unrelated content in the repository.
Read or download the complete GNU GPL version 3 licence . The original book includes the same licence as Appendix C; this edition supplies it as a separate text file.
The web edition source archive contains the Markdown chapters, example TeX sources, illustration builder, rendering shortcode, and licence. Rendered examples also link directly to their individual TeX sources.
Chapter mapping #
Printed page numbers below refer to the source’s own numbering. PDF viewer page numbers are 23 greater for these chapters.
| Web chapter | Original sections | Printed pages |
|---|---|---|
| 1. LaTeX Basics | 1.1–1.9 | 1–22 |
| 2. Real World LaTeX | 2.1–2.21 | 23–90 |
| 3. Mathematical Formulae | 3.1–3.11 | 91–150 |
| 4. Bibliographies | 4.1–4.2 | 151–164 |
| 5. Specialities | 5.1–5.4 | 165–188 |
| 6. Graphics | 6.1–6.7 | 189–210 |
| 7. Customising LaTeX | 7.1–7.9 | 211–270 |
| Appendix B | Older constructs and alternatives | 275–282 |
| Licence file | Original Appendix C | 283–300 |
Editorial approach #
The chapter order and main section numbers follow the supplied edition. The explanations are rewritten and condensed for a website, while preserving the core concepts, package choices, and workflows. This is not a line-by-line transcription or a replacement for every example in the PDF.
Changes include:
- Shorter examples with explicit package requirements and source-file placement.
- Actual LaTeX renderings for tables, mathematics, diagrams, boxes, and a presentation frame.
- Portable example font choices, rather than assuming particular commercial or system fonts.
- A clear distinction between reusable code fragments and complete documents.
- Clarification of compiler requirements, extra-file dependencies, and bibliography/index processing.
- Correction of incidental typographical or mathematical mistakes instead of reproducing them.
- Qualifications around older syntax: working legacy templates should not be rewritten blindly.
The PDF’s installation appendix (Appendix A), acknowledgements, exhaustive symbol/font samples, extended package-option demonstrations, full bibliography, and back-of-book index are not reproduced. The source remains the reference for these details.
Some examples and practical notes are newly written for this adaptation. They illustrate the same concepts; their wording, data, and rendered appearance need not match the source book exactly.