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LaTeX Templates

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Re: LaTeX Templates

#11

Post by pseut »

alexholehouse wrote: post #5

I use LaTex for a lot of my note taking (for typesetting all equations certainly). When I first started using it, I remember the absolute horror of trying to get it to work with BibTex. The learning curve is relatively steep for non-programmers (I learnt it basically in parallel with learning to code) but it's certainly one of the most valuable tools I've learned and one I continually come back to for a huge range of…

Quick comment on bibtex: if you use emacs, reftex mode is essential. My current setup is:

* A directory and git repo for each paper (use your own VCS as desired)

* A separate git repo for my global bibtex file and a few heavily used .tex files (i.e. tcilatex.tex for sciword coauthors); this repo is set up as a submodule for all of the individual papers and they refer to their local version of the bibtex file.

* Really short, memorable bibkeys in the bibtex file (I first saw this recommended on I think stack overflow, but can't find a link right now). For a single author, first three characters of the name and last two characters of the year: Engle (1982) becomes Eng82; (by example...) Engle and Granger (1987) becomes EnG87; Sargent, Williams and Zha (2006) becomes SWZ06; etc.

This way I can just type most of the citations I need off the top of my head. The few I can't remember, I'll forget the year and searching by the first author via reftex takes about 5 seconds.

But, more and more for personal and not-for publication notes, I find myself just typing in the unicode and sticking with a plain text file.

edit: I'd love to hear other people's setup too, it took me a while to converge to this one and I'm sure there are better approaches.

Re: LaTeX Templates

#12

Post by joshuagross »

a_bonobo wrote: post #10
alexholehouse wrote: post #5

I use LaTex for a lot of my note taking (for typesetting all equations certainly). When I first started using it, I remember the absolute horror of trying to get it to work with BibTex. The learning curve is relatively steep for non-programmers (I learnt it basically in parallel with learning to code) but it's certainly one of the most valuable tools I've learned and one I continually come back to for a huge range of…

>Certainly in an academic environment it continues to surprise me that everyone isn't taught LaTex in their first year of a PhD. I work in a academic environment as well, and I give it another 10-20 years until it will be widespread for everything - currently my supervisors want me to write everything in .doc as they don't know LaTeX and don't want to learn (no time, which I can understand). It's not very widespread…

I still haven't figured out if the general trend is up/down for LaTeX (I have a vested interest, CTO of SpanDeX.io, but I'm not sure).

My argument against "give it another 10-20 years" is that LaTeX has already been around forever. I know people even in math, physics, and CS that never use LaTeX (in favor of Word). Which I find silly and strange, but it is what it is.

Of course, I'm hoping that new online editors like SpanDeX.io and LaTeXTemplates are the adrenaline shot that LaTeX needs for wider adoption.

Re: LaTeX Templates

#13

Post by VelNZ »

pseut wrote: post #11
alexholehouse wrote: post #5

I use LaTex for a lot of my note taking (for typesetting all equations certainly). When I first started using it, I remember the absolute horror of trying to get it to work with BibTex. The learning curve is relatively steep for non-programmers (I learnt it basically in parallel with learning to code) but it's certainly one of the most valuable tools I've learned and one I continually come back to for a huge range of…

Quick comment on bibtex: if you use emacs, reftex mode is essential. My current setup is: * A directory and git repo for each paper (use your own VCS as desired) * A separate git repo for my global bibtex file and a few heavily used .tex files (i.e. tcilatex.tex for sciword coauthors); this repo is set up as a submodule for all of the individual papers and they refer to their local version of the bibtex file. * Reall…

I'll describe my setup for writing academic publications in LaTeX.

I use Papers which is available for Windows and OS X. Their software is quite easy to use. Papers can export your library to BibTeX, so I simply export it to the directory of the document I'm writing, include it as usual.

Now the best part, for referencing as I'm writing... Papers comes with this overlay when you press Control+M in OS X. This overlay consists of just a box to type in, you type the title of the paper or author names and it comes up with a search result, select the paper you want and press enter, you can then press enter again to add a LaTeX citation into your document or add more papers to cite multiple papers at once. Since you've exported the library to BibTeX using Papers, the citekey matches. I can't imagine how any solution could be easier than this.

Re: LaTeX Templates

#14

Post by pseut »

Just a nitpick: I had to look at the source for "professional table" and was surprised to see the booktabs package used because, to quote their documentation

> You will not go far wrong if you remember two simple guidelines at all times:

> 1. Never, ever use vertical rules.

> 2. Never use double rules.

Violating half the 'nevers'!! But, more seriously, the documentation for some LaTeX packages is breathtakingly good (booktabs, amsmath, beamer, tikz, to name a few off the top of my head) and it would be really helpful if the site pointed newcomers to some of it. Especially in the case I mentioned, where the template is just a demonstration of one package.

Re: LaTeX Templates

#15

Post by pseut »

VelNZ wrote: post #13
pseut wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick comment on bibtex: if you use emacs, reftex mode is essential. My current setup is: * A directory and git repo for each paper (use your own VCS as desired) * A separate git repo for my global bibtex file and a few heavily used .tex files (i.e. tcilatex.tex for sciword coauthors); this repo is set up as a submodule for all of the individual papers and they refer to their local version of the bibtex file. * Reall…

I'll describe my setup for writing academic publications in LaTeX. I use Papers which is available for Windows and OS X. Their software is quite easy to use. Papers can export your library to BibTeX, so I simply export it to the directory of the document I'm writing, include it as usual. Now the best part, for referencing as I'm writing... Papers comes with this overlay when you press Control+M in OS X. This overlay…

Thanks for sharing that. RefTeX is about that easy: "Ctrl-[" then choose a citation style, then regexp search of the bibtex database with the option to choose multiple papers.

If you update a paper's citation details (say someone's working paper gets published, so you have to add a journal, etc.) how do you make that change across directories? Do you re-export from papers for each one?

Re: LaTeX Templates

#16

Post by VelNZ »

pseut wrote: post #15
VelNZ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll describe my setup for writing academic publications in LaTeX. I use Papers which is available for Windows and OS X. Their software is quite easy to use. Papers can export your library to BibTeX, so I simply export it to the directory of the document I'm writing, include it as usual. Now the best part, for referencing as I'm writing... Papers comes with this overlay when you press Control+M in OS X. This overlay…

Thanks for sharing that. RefTeX is about that easy: "Ctrl-[" then choose a citation style, then regexp search of the bibtex database with the option to choose multiple papers. If you update a paper's citation details (say someone's working paper gets published, so you have to add a journal, etc.) how do you make that change across directories? Do you re-export from papers for each one?

Yeah, unfortunately you have to go in and manually export as BibTeX after every change to your reference library. It's not very annoying if you are writing one paper but I can see how that would be annoying if you're writing many at once. I suppose one could point LaTeX towards one master library in one location which you export to...

Re: LaTeX Templates

#17

Post by pseut »

VelNZ wrote: post #16
pseut wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing that. RefTeX is about that easy: "Ctrl-[" then choose a citation style, then regexp search of the bibtex database with the option to choose multiple papers. If you update a paper's citation details (say someone's working paper gets published, so you have to add a journal, etc.) how do you make that change across directories? Do you re-export from papers for each one?

Yeah, unfortunately you have to go in and manually export as BibTeX after every change to your reference library. It's not very annoying if you are writing one paper but I can see how that would be annoying if you're writing many at once. I suppose one could point LaTeX towards one master library in one location which you export to...

Probably my biggest "eureka" moment was when I realized that I don't publish enough papers a year for bibtex file management to really be something that I needed to optimize... unfortunately I realized that long after I'd optimized the hell out of my bibtex file management.

Re: LaTeX Templates

#18

Post by VelNZ »

pseut wrote: post #17
VelNZ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, unfortunately you have to go in and manually export as BibTeX after every change to your reference library. It's not very annoying if you are writing one paper but I can see how that would be annoying if you're writing many at once. I suppose one could point LaTeX towards one master library in one location which you export to...

Probably my biggest "eureka" moment was when I realized that I don't publish enough papers a year for bibtex file management to really be something that I needed to optimize... unfortunately I realized that long after I'd optimized the hell out of my bibtex file management.

Haha, I actually started using Papers because it was the only software that was a reference manager that synched highlights and notes in papers with my iPad. The BibTeX integration was a pleasant surprise!

Re: LaTeX Templates

#19

Post by jlgreco »

joshuagross wrote: post #12
a_bonobo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Certainly in an academic environment it continues to surprise me that everyone isn't taught LaTex in their first year of a PhD. I work in a academic environment as well, and I give it another 10-20 years until it will be widespread for everything - currently my supervisors want me to write everything in .doc as they don't know LaTeX and don't want to learn (no time, which I can understand). It's not very widespread…

I still haven't figured out if the general trend is up/down for LaTeX (I have a vested interest, CTO of SpanDeX.io, but I'm not sure). My argument against "give it another 10-20 years" is that LaTeX has already been around forever. I know people even in math, physics, and CS that never use LaTeX (in favor of Word). Which I find silly and strange, but it is what it is. Of course, I'm hoping that new online editors lik…

If someone makes it to graduate school without knowing LaTeX, I would suspect chances are high they don't really have any interest in changing their routine then. They're busy, and hey, word has been working in university for several years already!

If I wanted to increase LaTeX adoption, I would get undergrads hooked on it. I bailed to LaTeX my second year of undergrad and never looked back. Even with papers for the english department it was great, if only because it just looked that much better than all the Word formatted papers from my peers. The fact that it made bibliographies dead simple was just icing on the cake, it practically felt like cheating. Get undergraduates to understand those "sly" benefits and they'll be willing to take a night off from binge drinking to learn it. At least more willing than a grad student anyway.

Re: LaTeX Templates

#20

Post by Tyr42 »

I keep clicking the orange text below the share buttons, trying to get more info. I think it should be a link, to the same place as the title of the template links to.

I love it and I'm going to use the code template for my next assignment.

You have anything to draw DFAs?

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