Anyone have experience with LaTeX?

[HoboNinja]

So we are using LaTeX for my physics course and I can use it for my EE course as well. But I don't know how to use it at all, I assume we are going to go over it sometime before the first lab writeup for physics but I am not sure, I wanted to get my EE lab writeup done in it today or tomorrow so I don't have to worry about doing homework on the weekend but yeah no idea how this thing works.





And if people come in here no knowing what LaTeX is, it's a document writer/formatting language for science papers.

 

[Matt²]

oh.. (puts gloves away)

..nevermind!

 

[PatrThom]

My college roomie used it extensively, but though I was impressed with its capabilities, I never learned to use it. I do remember looking through the formatting syntax and thinking it was all pretty straightforward, though.

--Patrick

 

[Reboneer]

I use it fairly often. It has a slight learning curve, but once you know what you're doing it makes life a lot easier.


... Although, if you just want to get your lab writeup done, you could probably just go download LyX. It's a graphical WYSIWYM frontend for LaTeX.

 

[tegid]

I do!

I recommend you try LyX for starters (LyX | LyX – The Document Processor)

It's an environment that does the same as LaTeX but you don't need to code anything. If you want to learn how to write the code, I recommend you get a file from someone else* and do your work modifying it, or do your first one with LyX and export it to LaTeX and do that.

I know the formatting, etc. and I can write in LaTeX directly, but I've recently gone back to Lyx because for writing long things it's much more comfortable. Remember that even if you're using LyX you can write parts in code. For instance (and this is especially useful), inside math formulas (ctrl+M) you can write \whatever where 'whatever' is what you want to get, for instance '\sigma' for the greek letter or '\frac' for a fraction. Writing is much faster than clicking through the menus.

EDIT:*I could provide something, although my documents are not very good in LaTeX style.

 

[Charlie Don't Surf]

The trick is that you roll it down the shaft.

 

[fade]

I only write with LaTeX when I can. I've even written a few classes, and contributed to some open source projects. So yeah, I can help you. I disagree with PatrThom completely. There's nothing you can do in Word that I can't do better and prettier in LaTeX, and there's a great deal Word can't do that LaTeX can. Like properly full justify.

Keep in mind unlike a wordprocessor, it's a type-setting engine. It has a great deal of actually quite sophisticated AI (written by none other than Knuth himself) for deciding how the page comes out. LaTeX is a macro extension to TeX that seeks to allow the user to only have to worry about the format of a document, not the appearance (though that's easy enough to do, too). You define what is a section header, what's a title, etc. LaTeX then decides, based on the class you pick, how to make it look. If this sounds familiar, it's been added (relatively recently in the grand scheme) to Word, too.

Overall, it's similar to HTML in a lot of ways. You put markup in your text. Run LaTeX on it, and boom. If you use pdflatex (you should), the output is a pretty, small, ready to share pdf. The class (which you usually won't mess with directly) is similar to CSS in concept.

All that said, you probably won't like the default formatting. The margins are too wide (they're booklike). The default maketitle command sucks. I never use it. I just roll my own. There are a set of packages that extend capabilities included in LaTeX. Like "fullpage", which corrects the ridiculous margins.

Long story short, search for "The Not-so-Short guide to LaTeX". It's a really good intro. If you want examples of what good latex looks like, open your nearest physics book. Chances are it was written in LaTeX. Nothing beats it for typesetting equations.

 

[Krisken]

The trick is that you roll it down the shaft.

This is something I hoped I'd never see. A penis giving advice on how to use latex.

 

[PatrThom]

I disagree with PatrThom completely.

Disagree? With what? He really DID use it extensively. And the syntax reminded me a lot of HTML or Wordperfect. Though if you're used to using Word, it would require a mentality switch.

--Patrick

 

[fade]

Whoops. My bad. I read "unimpressed". Sorry.

 

[HoboNinja]

I downloaded LyX, going to screw around with it for a bit before I go trying to format my own stuff. Apparently sometime next week they will email us the template for the labs.

 

[Element 117]

 

[Hailey Knight]

Yeah, I thought it'd be about something else too...

 

[Papillon]

Google for lshort.pdf. It contains almost everything you will need to write most LaTeX documents.

You might also want to check out the amsmath package for more math symbols and layout options, but it's not necessary.

Basic setup of a LaTeX document is going to be something like:

\documentclass{article}
\author{Name}
\title{Title}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
\LaTeX template written off the top of my head. Might not compile quite right the first time.
\end{abstract}

\tableofcontents

\section{First Section}
Some text stuff.

Making sure to put a blank space between paragraphs.
Lines without a blank space between them will be combined
into the same paragraph.

\subsection{Subsection}

You can do subsections too, of course, and subsubsections, etc.

\section{Math}

The real power of \LaTeX comes from it's math capabilities though, which are done with entirely with text, and can be intimidating at first but really powerful once you get used to it
\begin{equation}
\frac{\partial{}^2f}{\partial{}t^2} = \frac{\partial{}^2f}{\partial{}s^2}\left(\frac{\partial{}s}{\partial{}t}\right)^2
+ \frac{\partial{}f}{\partial{}s}\frac{\partial^2s}{\partial{}t^2}
\end{equation}
\end{document}

 

[fade]

Except I'd recommend against \maketitle. It's ugly. I'd roll my own. YOu can use any TeX commands in LaTeX. TeX is more low-level, but contains formatting commands, which LaTeX tries to avoid.

I like doing something like:

\leftline{\bf This is the title}
\leftline{\it Joe Blow, Jerkwad University}

Leftline, rightline, and centerline do single lines justified like the name says.

lshort.pdf is the same doc I recommended above--it'll take you from beginner to intermediate in a day.

The equations (which you basically write out in plain English) and crossreferencing are well worth learning. I.e. you don't identify an equation or figure by number. They autonumber. You just refer to the label you designate later, and it's replaced by the autonumber. OH! and bibtex is AWESOME for bibliographies.

 

[fade]

I downloaded LyX, going to screw around with it for a bit before I go trying to format my own stuff. Apparently sometime next week they will email us the template for the labs.

I actually recommend against LyX starting out. I think it's best to get in and get your hands dirty. LaTeX is really easy (though if you start trying to do complicated stuff, it'll shoot up in difficulty fast), and you can learn it in a day, two at the most.

LaTeX is actually one of the places it pays to have a Mac. TexShop is an AWESOME program, even if you don't use the built in editor. In fact, it's so awesome, they've tried to port it to Windows as TexWorks, though it's a bit unpolished as yet. Texnic Center is good and free, though the interface is a bit crowded. WinEdt is my favorite windows tex editor, but it's pay. Really, though, all you need is Notepad and a cmd window if you want to really rough it.

 

[Papillon]

I really like the Auctex mode for Emacs -- you can preview figures and equations inside of emacs, run LaTeX and dvi viewer with a keyboard shortcut, syntax highlighting (of course), and spell checking if you install ispell (although I haven't figured out how to get it to skip equations and LaTeX commands).

Emacs also includes a built-in LaTeX mode which isn't as good.

I would recommend against notepad + cmd. Sure it will work, but notepad and cmd are both really painful to use for anything other than the smallest of tasks.

Also, fade do you know how to get a vertical rule on the left side of box?

 

[fade]

What kind of box? Like a regular mbox?

Oh, I thought of something else...
There's a community of LaTeX users out there who feel compelled to use it for EVERYTHING. Don't become one of those. It's great for documents, especially with math. You know what it sucks at? Anything where heavy duty pretty formatting is a concern. Use Word, or better yet Pages or InDesign for that stuff. And I know Beamer has this obsessive following, but don't use LaTeX for presentations. I think Beamer is the dumbest thing--and this is from a guy who contributed to one of the prerunners that merged into Beamer. Use PowerPoint (or if you have a Mac, Keynote is to powerpoint what the car is to the horse. Even the most windows-obsessed geeks I know drool over Keynote) for that stuff. Beamer and LaTeX encourage bad, wordy slide design, and they're frankly ugly.

 

[Papillon]

Something more like a minipage, although I guess you could put a minipage inside an mbox.

I've sort-of figured it out now -- I'm just using a tabular environment.

 

[Cajungal]

The trick is that you roll it down the shaft.

I was all ready to use my angry mod letters to show my disappointment that no one had used this joke yet. But then young Charles came through. ^_^ What a good birthday.

 

[CynicismKills]

The trick is that you roll it down the shaft.

I was all ready to use my angry mod letters to show my disappointment that no one had used this joke yet. But then young Charles came through. ^_^ What a good birthday.[/QUOTE]

If he came through then there's going to be some problems a few months down the road.