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Begin LaTeX in minutes

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Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#41

Post by mixedmath »

A better title would be "How to produce a simple LaTeX document in minutes". Or perhaps even "Another brief LaTeX tutorial".

When I first began to use LaTeX long ago, a friend of mine gave me a preamble and essentially told me to not touch it until I knew better. This was very helpful to me, and I immediately began to use LaTeX in a mindset that separated content from presentation. Later, I did know better, but I'd already gotten the gist of what's going on.

Years later, when I introduce LaTeX to others (which I have frequently done), I follow the same starting path.

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#42

Post by 1wd »

Just don't try anything that isn't in your typical math paper. There are thousands of LaTeX packages, because they are all broken if you use them in a slightly unexpected way, so (reminiscent of JavaScript) a new package is created to "fix" it.

Tables? Here you go. Oh, you wanted nested tables? For that you need to switch to an entirely different package. Oh, and that one doesn't support splitting up tables over multiple pages. Maybe this new one can do it. But it doesn't support that other package you use. Maybe try that one instead. Oh, in that one you can't have ...

Or is that just me?

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#43

Post by leephillips »

yk wrote: post #21

It lacks the most important LaTeX tip, don't fight the machine. LaTeX is really good at getting documents that look 90% as good as an actual typesetter could make them look, if one can live with somewhat conservative looking documents. The last 10 percent, fixing margin width, changing paragraphs and so on, are incredibly hard with LaTeX. (Of course LaTeX defaults are a lot better than word, largely because LaTeX aut…

I get your point, but you're really exaggerating the difficulty of changing margins, paragraph spacing, and similar things. It's easy with straight LaTeX, and even easier with the "geometry" package.

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#44

Post by renke1 »

logicallee wrote: post #37
renke1 wrote: post #5

I used LaTeX a lot in university, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Even a minimal (and good looking) document requires a lot of (La)TeX knowledge. You can of course use one of many existing templates, but you will quickly feel lost when you have to customize things. These days, just go with Markdown (or the like) and just include assets (say graphs) as SVG and be done with it. For scientific papers (especially…

>but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. surely you're not being literal, or you meant "wouldn't recommend it to just anyone" - for example for setting mathematical and physics formulas, wouldn't you still recommend it?

Yes, of course, you are right. I forgot about formulas altogether! That's where LaTeX really shines!

But even then you could probably integrate MathJax or KaTeX with Markdown. That would give you the best of both worlds.

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#45

Post by [deleted] »

logicallee wrote: post #37
renke1 wrote: post #5

I used LaTeX a lot in university, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Even a minimal (and good looking) document requires a lot of (La)TeX knowledge. You can of course use one of many existing templates, but you will quickly feel lost when you have to customize things. These days, just go with Markdown (or the like) and just include assets (say graphs) as SVG and be done with it. For scientific papers (especially…

>but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. surely you're not being literal, or you meant "wouldn't recommend it to just anyone" - for example for setting mathematical and physics formulas, wouldn't you still recommend it?

[deleted]

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#46

Post by Tehnix »

mynewtb wrote: post #38
pfooti wrote: post #22

The usual plug for sharelatex here. Check out sharelatex.com, it is amazing. Write LaTeX without having to install it, plus collaboration in the cloud. (I'm not affiliated, just a fan). And in general, LaTeX is a super worthwhile language to learn. It may be a bit more complicated than markdown or its cousins, but it can do pretty much everything. I've barely scratched the surface of what it can do, but since I live…

How do you deal with 'the cloud' not being under your control? Can you sync the documents from sharelatex to your local file system automatically?

They support syncing to and from Dropbox directly https://www.sharelatex.com/dropbox. So you can work offline, use your own editor etc.

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#47

Post by yk »

pwdisswordfish wrote: post #36
yk wrote: post #21

It lacks the most important LaTeX tip, don't fight the machine. LaTeX is really good at getting documents that look 90% as good as an actual typesetter could make them look, if one can live with somewhat conservative looking documents. The last 10 percent, fixing margin width, changing paragraphs and so on, are incredibly hard with LaTeX. (Of course LaTeX defaults are a lot better than word, largely because LaTeX aut…

Consistent header styles are doable with MS Word too. It's just that few people seem to learn that feature.

Yes, but there are 500 'features' in Word which are almost always really stupid ideas, an experienced graphics designer knows how to use them, 99% of Word users don't. In LaTeX you have to work to do something really stupid.

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#48

Post by amelius »

Sometimes I wonder: why can't LaTeX be just as simple as HTML, or perhaps even simpler? Except perhaps for pagination and available default fonts, HTML practically fulfills all my formatting needs. (Note: HTML includes MathML, a mathematical formula markup language). And for automatically numbering tables and figures, one can easily write a script that is completely independent from the underlying formatting language.

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#49

Post by JorgeGT »

daemonk wrote: post #30

I personally really like using latex. But the main problem for me is that latex is not really designed for collaborative editing, especially with people who don't know latex. are there any track changes feature plugin/app that's available and relatively simple for people who mainly use MS word.

Well, the fact that it is a plaintext-based format makes it work extremely well with git. So for collaboration you can have a repo (even hosted in github) and your co-authors can propose merges, etc. It is extremely nice to be able to see the log of commits and who changed exactly what at any point in time, something I think it's difficult in complex formats like Word. Or you can use sharelatex.com as others have commented.

Re: Begin LaTeX in minutes

#50

Post by daemonk »

PleaseHelpMe wrote: post #32
daemonk wrote: post #30

I personally really like using latex. But the main problem for me is that latex is not really designed for collaborative editing, especially with people who don't know latex. are there any track changes feature plugin/app that's available and relatively simple for people who mainly use MS word.

checkout sharelatex.com

I've used sharelatex and overleaf. I find them great. But what people in my field want are tracked changes features that you see in MS word. So deleted/added text highlighted by who changed it, comment boxes, etc.
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