the most important thing about this section is that you don't have to read it. there should be a paper copy of this manual, preferably in george, and if you don't want to learn LATEX (or simply don't have time to -- not that swatties ever have busy schedules), just write stuff in the margins. the information is much more important than the typesetting. that's why i didn't print this double-sided; i wanted to leave more space for people to add their own comments without typing them.
however, if you do want to edit the electronic manual, and it would be cool if someone did at some point, here are some directions for how to do so. the manual is typeset in LATEX2e, which is the current version of the LATEX typesetting language. so this is a quick guide to using LATEX at swat, and to some of the conventions i used.