Are you in a hurry? A friend received a letter from the American
Mathematical Society (AMS) inform- ing him that his paper had been
accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the AMS. If he submitted
it as a lt-TEX document, it would be published in 20 weeks- any other
format would take almost a year before the appearance in print of the
article. The friend had It-T EX installed on his computer on Friday,
borrowed the manu- script of this book, and mailed a It-T EX version of
his article to the AMS on Monday. First Steps in YI'EX is for the
mathematician, physicist, engineer, scientist, or technical typist who
needs to quickly learn how to write and typeset articles con- taining
mathematical formulas. A quick introduction to E\TE)C and the AMS
enhancements is provided so that you will be ready to prepare your first
article (such as the sample articles on pages 53-54 and 67-69) in only a
few hours. Specific topics can be found in the table of contents, the
Quick Finder, or the index. While the index is Jt.TEX -oriented, the
Quick Finder lists the main topics using terminology common to
wordprocessing applications. For example, to find out how to italicize
text, look under italics in the Quick Finder. Setting the stage Watch
someone type a mathematical article in I!lfE)C. You will see how to -
Type the document using a text editor to create a Jt.TE)C source file.
