LaTeX

latex

1. a whitish milky fluid containing protein, starch, alkaloids, etc., that is produced by many plants. Latex from the rubber tree is used in the manufacture of rubber

2. a suspension of synthetic rubber or plastic in water, used in the manufacture of synthetic rubber products, etc.

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

latex

[′lā‚teks]

(materials)

Milky colloid in which natural or synthetic rubber or plastic is suspended in water.

An elastomer product made from latex.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

latex

An emulsion of finely dispersed particles of natural or synthetic rubber or plastic materials in water.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

LaTeX

(language, text, tool)

(Lamport TeX) Leslie Lamport <lamport@pa.dec.com>'s document preparation system built on top of TeX. LaTeX was developed at SRI International's Computer Science Laboratory and was built to resemble Scribe.

LaTeX adds commands to simplify typesetting and lets the user concentrate on the structure of the text rather than on formatting commands.

BibTeX is a LaTeX package for bibliographic citations.

Lamport's LaTeX book has an exemplary index listing every symbol, concept and example in the book. The index in the, now obsolete, first edition includes (on page 221) the mysterious entry "Gilkerson, Ellen, 221". The second edition (1994) has an entry for "infinite loop" instead.

["LaTeX, A Document Preparation System", Leslie Lamport, A-W 1986, ISBN 0-201-15790-X (first edition, now obsolete)].

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

LaTeX

(LAmport TeX) A document preparation system based on the TeX language developed by Leslie Lamport at SRI International. LaTeX provides a macro language for TeX that lets the user concentrate on the logical structure of the document rather than the format codes. See TeX.

Copyright © 1981-2025 by The Computer Language Company Inc. All Rights reserved. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. All other reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission from the publisher.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Latex

 

the transparent, milk-white, yellowish brown, yellow, or orange contents of the latex vessels of plants.

A number of plants of the families Euphorbiaceae, Moraceae, and Compositae hold large amounts of latex, which contains (dissolved or suspended) carbohydrates, proteins, glycosides, salts, and essential oils. The characteristic components of the latex of gutta-percha-yielding and rubber-yielding plants are resins, gutta, and natural rubber. The latex of certain plants of the poppy family (Papaveraceae) contains large quantities of alkaloids. The latex of the papaya yields the enzyme papain.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.