A first example

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A simple letter written with L^ATEX: simple.tex

The generated document looks like:

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A L^ATEX file consists of regular text and commands. The line breaks and additional spaces in the text are ignored. Exception: Blank lines produce a new paragraph.

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L^ATEX commands start with the backslash '\'. They may contain arguments which are enclosed in curly ({,}) brackets. If there are additional optional arguments, they are given first, enclosed in square ([,]) brackets.

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The simple command \LaTeX produces the word Latex in the usual form: L^ATEX.

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A linebreak is inserted with the command \\.

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The commands \opening and \closing set their argument in a special style at the beginning resp. end of the letter.

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A special class of commands use ``environments'':

  \begin{ENVIR}
   text more text much text

   even spanning paragraphs
  \end{ENVIR}
 

They set the text between \begin{ENVIR} and \end{ENVIR} in a special way, according to the given environment.

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The letter environment creates a letter from the included text. It starts with the current date and the address (given as argument) and ends with the signature that was defined before. A document can contain several letters.

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A L^ATEX document has the following structure

 \documentclass[OPTIONS]{TYPE}

    PREAMBEL

 \begin{document}

    TEXT

 \end{document}
  

with:

OPTIONS	describe some general parameters like paper format or basic font size (a4paper, 11pt)
TYPE	type of document (article, report, book)
PREAMBEL	commands with special style infos or macros
TEXT	the text with additional commands

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The preambel contains definitions and general settings. They are not displayed directly, but influence the appearance of the text or are used in the text.

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The example text contains the \signature command in the preambel. It stores the signature for later use in the letter.