LaTeX2PDF – A Web Utility To Convert LaTeX Into PDF

1. Not liking something is NOT THE SAME as hating it.
2. With above point in mind, I do not like MS Word.
3. With first point still in mind, I do not dislike and/or hate people who like and/or use MS Word.
4. I LOVE LaTeX – nerds/geeks don’t feel like doing something (be it as simple a task as preparing a document) unless one actually compiles it (and gets error messages for mistakes); and whether you agree with me or not, I am one of them.

What Is LaTeX?

LaTeX is based on Donald E. Knuth’s TeX typesetting language or certain extensions. LaTeX was first developed in 1985 by Leslie Lamport, and is now being maintained and developed by the LaTeX3 Project. Following Wikipedia and other resources, LaTeX is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents but it can be used for almost any form of publishing.

It is widely used by mathematicians, scientists, philosophers, engineers, and scholars in academia and the commercial world, and by others as a primary or intermediate format (e.g. translating DocBook and other XML-based formats to PDF) because of the quality of typesetting achievable by TeX. It offers programmable desktop publishing features and extensive facilities for automating most aspects of typesetting and desktop publishing, including numbering and cross-referencing, tables and figures, page layout and bibliographies.

Why LaTeX?

To produce even the simplest of documents with section headings, author names, etc. in most typesetting or word-processing systems, the author would have to decide what layout to use, so would select (say) 18pt Times Roman for the title, 12pt Times Italic for the name, and so on. This has two results: authors wasting their time with designs; and a lot of badly designed documents! LaTeX contains features for:

1. Typesetting journal articles, technical reports, books, and slide presentations.
2. Control over large documents containing sectioning, cross-references, tables and figures.
3. Typesetting of complex mathematical formulas.
4. Advanced typesetting of mathematics with AMS-LaTeX.
5. Automatic generation of bibliographies and indexes.
6. Multi-lingual typesetting.
7. Inclusion of artwork, and process or spot colour.
8. Using PostScript or Metafont fonts.
9. Accomplishing just about anything, via few hundreds of available packages.

Why Use An Online Tool When My Computer Can Do It Locally?

It’s not uncommon that we find ourselves in uncommon territory – using a friend’s computer or a public computer (e.g. a University Library or a Computing Lab, etc.). In an ideal world, every machine we touch would have every thing we need. But it’s seldom the case. As such, in cases where all we have access to is the LaTeX file (which needs to be processed) and the internet, this utility comes to one’s rescue.

Using this web-based utility is pretty simple. Just type-in (or paste) the LaTeX code in the form. Be sure to include everything – preamble (\documentclass{}, list of \usepackage{}, macro definitions, etc.) and the body (\begin{document}, \end{document} and everything that goes between them). When compiled and completed successfully, save the resulting LaTeX, DVI and PDF files to your computer. As of now, this utility does not support figures and/or other type of inclusions.

Screenshot

Just An Example

One can get started by accessing this page.

Disclaimer #1

I understand that this web-based utility might have some bugs. If you have issues/problems using it, please feel free to post your issue/concern as a comment in the form below and either me or some other LaTeX user will respond.