| MiKTeX | You could call this a particular flavor of TeX. As I see it, TeX is the root idea and was implemented as TeX. Then came LaTeX that had a few more bells and whistles. Then came MiKTeX with even more. I'm sure there's even more fancy things out there, but this is what I use and it seems to work. Most of the TeX help on the web can be used with MiKTeX. Occasionally, you'll find some codes or keywords that aren't recognized by MiKTeX, but rarely, and you can always find other ways of getting the output you're looking for. Download this and install it. I've always used the default settings of the installer, but other settings should work. |
| WinEdt | Great software designed to run TeX. Basically, this software gives TeX a nice graphical user interface (GUI). Is it really necessary? No. But then, is an operating system really necessary? Do you really need a mouse, or keyboard for that matter? Couldn't we just use two buttons? 1 and 0. This software can be run in simple mode with standard settings all set, or you can dig into the options and really customize how TeX is working. Very nice in that way. Also, it will come with 30 day free trial, bu then you gotta pay for it. I'd say just get a ligitimate copy, don't be so cheap. It's only like 20 bucks or something. Download this and install it, and you should be able to run their tutorials and sample TeX code. |
| USC Thesis Class | This is the document class file that can be used to format your TeX documents in USC Graduate School standards for thesis submission. Most universities have their own class files, and some graduate schools offer these to their students...but not USC. They want to make graduate students suffer with antiquated technology. I found this on some other students website who got his PhD in the 90's. So, needless to say, this is a bit outdated and if you're going to be submitting you're thesis to USC, you'll have to get an edittor to make some changes. This thing is pretty much a black box for me. I haven't taken the time to figure out exactly what it does, but I know it sets font sizes, margins, how to handle figures, and a bunch of other more complicated technical english composition stuff. |
| Qualifying Exam TeX Files | Here's a bunch of files you can use to test out your progress. To use this, you'll also need the USC Thesis Class file above. You'll want to open all the .tex files with WinEdt, then you'll need to comment out all the figures in chapterone.tex, and probably comment out the \includes in qual.tex, and probably comment out other stuff as well. When you build it, use any of the builders in WinEdt, but I prefer the pdfTeXify. Not sure really what the exact differences are, but this one seems to work well. When I use others, I don't get my code to look right. If there is an error during the building process, it will tell you, and the "log" in WinEdt will allow you to browse through all the warnings and errors in the build. If you have an error, you can probably just comment out the lines that caused the problem, and re-build. Good Luck! |
| Qualifying Exam | If you had all the figures and files you needed, this is what you would get from the .tex files from above. However, since I only gave you the first chapter, and none of the figures, you'll get some of the text, but not the full thing. You should be able to use this to compare to and see if you're on the right track. Now just start working on earning that Nobel Prize! |
| LaTeX Book | This is a book explaining a bit of the history of LaTeX and the practical application issues. I also recommend visiting the WikiPedia article on LaTeX, and looking for the MiKTeK code for LaTeX implementation. |