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Formatting information — An introduction to typesetting with LATEX
Chapter 7: Programmability
In this chapter…
We've touched several times on the ability of LATEX to be reprogrammed. This is one of its central features, and one that still, after nearly a quarter of a century, puts it well above many other typesetting systems, even those with macro systems of their own. It's also the one that needs most foreknowledge, which is why this chapter is in this position.
LATEX is in fact itself just a collection of macros — rather a big collection — written in TEX's internal typesetting language. These macros are little program-like sets of instructions with a name which can be used as shorthand for an operation you wish to perform more than once.
Macros can be arbitrarily complex. Many of the ones used in the standard LATEX packages are several pages long, but as we will see, even short ones can very simply automate otherwise tedious chores and allow the author to concentrate on writing.