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<H1><A NAME="SECTION000400000000000000000"></A>
<BR>
3. <SPAN CLASS="logo LaTeX">L<SUP><SMALL>A</SMALL></SUP>T<SMALL>E</SMALL>X</SPAN> Primer 
</H1>

<P>
This section is a brief introduction to <SPAN CLASS="logo LaTeX">L<SUP><SMALL>A</SMALL></SUP>T<SMALL>E</SMALL>X</SPAN> concepts and
  syntax, to provide authors enough information to author documents
  productively without having to become ``<SPAN CLASS="logo TeX">T<SMALL>E</SMALL>X</SPAN>nicians.''

<P>
<SPAN CLASS="logo LaTeX">L<SUP><SMALL>A</SMALL></SUP>T<SMALL>E</SMALL>X</SPAN> documents contain two parts: the preamble and the body.
  The preamble is used to specify certain metadata about the document
  itself, such as the title, the list of authors, the date, and the
  <i>class</i> the document belongs to.  Additional information used
  to control index generation and the use of bibliographic databases
  can also be placed in the preamble.  For most authors, the preamble
  can be most easily created by copying it from an existing document
  and modifying a few key pieces of information.

<P>
The <i class=dfn>class</i> of a document is used to place a document within a
  broad category of documents and set some fundamental formatting
  properties.  For Python documentation, two classes are used: the
  <tt>manual</tt> class and the <tt>howto</tt> class.  These classes also
  define the additional markup used to document Python concepts and
  structures.  Specific information about these classes is provided in
  section <A HREF="classes.html#classes">4</A>, ``Document Classes,'' below.  The first thing
  in the preamble is the declaration of the document's class.

<P>
After the class declaration, a number of <i>macros</i> are used to
  provide further information about the document and setup any
  additional markup that is needed.  No output is generated from the
  preamble; it is an error to include free text in the preamble
  because it would cause output.

<P>
The document body follows the preamble.  This contains all the
  printed components of the document marked up structurally.  

<P>
XXX This section will discuss what the markup looks like, and
   explain the difference between an environment and a macro.

<P>
<p>
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