This is a short little shell script which executes the right commands to generate and display a PDF from a latex file. I, personally, named it ‘pdf’ and just placed it in my ~/bin/ directory. The code for this can be found below:
#!/bin/sh
pdflatex $1
bibtex $1
pdflatex $1
pdflatex $1
rm “$1.aux”
rm “$1.bbl”
rm “$1.blg”
rm “$1.log”
rm “$1.toc”
xpdf “$1.pdf” &
PPPP (March 27, 2007 at 8:08 am)
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{amsmath} % need for subequations
\usepackage{graphicx} % need for figures
\usepackage{verbatim} % useful for program listings
\usepackage{color} % use if color is used in text
\usepackage{subfigure} % use for side-by-side figures
\usepackage{hyperref} % use for hypertext links, including those to external documents and URLs
% don’t need the following. simply use defaults
\setlength{\baselineskip}{16.0pt} % 16 pt usual spacing between lines
\setlength{\parskip}{3pt plus 2pt}
\setlength{\parindent}{20pt}
\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0.5cm}
\setlength{\evensidemargin}{0.5cm}
\setlength{\marginparsep}{0.75cm}
\setlength{\marginparwidth}{2.5cm}
\setlength{\marginparpush}{1.0cm}
\setlength{\textwidth}{150mm}
\begin{comment}
\pagestyle{empty} % use if page numbers not wanted
\end{comment}
% above is the preamble
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
{\large Introduction to \LaTeX} \\ % \\ = new line
\copyright 2006 by Harvey Gould \\
December 5, 2006
\end{center}
\section{Introduction}
\TeX\ looks more difficult than it is. It is
almost as easy as $\pi$. See how easy it is to make special
symbols such as $\alpha$,
$\beta$, $\gamma$,
$\delta$, $\sin x$, $\hbar$, $\lambda$, $\ldots$ We also can make
subscripts
$A_{x}$, $A_{xy}$ and superscripts, $e^x$, $e^{x^2}$, and
$e^{a^b}$. We will use \LaTeX, which is based on \TeX\ and has
many higher-level commands (macros) for formatting, making
tables, etc. More information can be found in Ref.~\cite{latex}.
We just made a new paragraph. Extra lines and spaces make no
difference. Note that all formulas are enclosed by
\$ and occur in \textit{math mode}.
The default font is Computer Modern. It includes \textit{italics},
\textbf{boldface},
\textsl{slanted}, and \texttt{monospaced} fonts.
\section{Equations}
Let us see how easy it is to write equations.
\begin{equation}
\Delta =\sum_{i=1}^N w_i (x_i – \bar{x})^2 .
\end{equation}
It is a good idea to number equations, but we can have a
equation without a number by writing
\begin{equation}
P(x) = \frac{x – a}{b – a} , \nonumber
\end{equation}
and
\begin{equation}
g = \frac{1}{2} \sqrt{2\pi} . \nonumber
\end{equation}
We can give an equation a label so that we can refer to it later.
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:ising}
E = -J \sum_{i=1}^N s_i s_{i+1} ,
\end{equation}
Equation~\eqref{eq:ising} expresses the energy of a configuration
of spins in the Ising model.\footnote{It is necessary to process (typeset) a
file twice to get the counters correct.}
We can define our own macros to save typing. For example, suppose
that we introduce the macros:
\begin{verbatim}
\newcommand{\lb}{{\langle}}
\newcommand{\rb}{{\rangle}}
\end{verbatim}
\newcommand{\lb}{{\langle}}
\newcommand{\rb}{{\rangle}}
Then we can write the average value of $x$ as
\begin{verbatim}
\begin{equation}
\lb x \rb = 3
\end{equation}
\end{verbatim}
The result is
\begin{equation}
\lb x \rb = 3 .
\end{equation}
Examples of more complicated equations:
\begin{equation}
I = \! \int_{-\infty}^\infty f(x)\,dx \label{eq:fine}.
\end{equation}
We can do some fine tuning by adding small amounts of horizontal
spacing:
\begin{verbatim}
\, small space \! negative space
\end{verbatim}
as is done in Eq.~\eqref{eq:fine}.
We also can align several equations:
\begin{align}
a & = b \\
c &= d ,
\end{align}
or number them as subequations:
\begin{subequations}
\begin{align}
a & = b \\
c &= d .
\end{align}
\end{subequations}
We can also have different cases:
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:mdiv}
m(T) =
\begin{cases}
0 & \text{$T > T_c$} \\
\bigl(1 – [\sinh 2 \beta J]^{-4} \bigr)^{\! 1/8} & \text{$T