Intro to LaTeX

Adapted by Garret Christensen from materials by Lawrence Lewis, Katy Huff, and Rachel Slaybaugh.

1. What is in this Directory?

There's a document, two presentations ('presentation'--an intro presentation and 'bodies'--some details on floats) and a poster (very alpha), which is meant to show the basics of LaTeX.

2. What is LaTeX and why would I want to use it?

LaTeX is a markup language for typesetting. It's not WYSIWYG like most word processors (i.e MS Word). To some extent, you worry about the content and let the engine handle the layout.

Really: it's like programming--if you put in the effort to get up the learning curve, you save time in the end by automating your document creation.

I use it because:

1. LaTeX handles citations for you.
2. LaTeX handles numbering, labels/references, table of contents, etc. for you.
3. LaTeX does beautiful math.
4. LaTeX is beautiful all around.
5. LaTeX doesn't bog down with long docs like MS Word.
6. LaTeX is free and open, and since it's based on mark-up of plain text files, everyone can use their preferred text editors to contribute to documents.

I still find it frustrating because:

1. It's got a learning curve.
2. Error messages feel cryptic. (But less cryptic than Word just doing something inexplicable. https://twitter.com/gossipgriII/status/713425874167537664)
3. I haven't mastered collaborative editing yet, but solutions exist.

3. How do I pronounce LaTeX?

Check it out, the last letter is the Greek letter $$\Chi$$. So, it definitely has to end in a K sound. But, is it Lay or Lah? The developers say it's up to you.

4. How do I install LaTeX?

For some reason, LaTeX takes up over a gigabyte, so installing may take a few minutes.

Linux

Everything in linux is simple.

sudo apt-get install texlive

Although the texlive package uses over 1 GB of disk space, there are many LaTeX extensions that enable even more features. In (debian-based) linux, the easiest way to install these LaTeX extensions is with apt-get. For example, if you're interested in pretty formatting for radionuclides, you will want the mhchem LaTeX package, which can be found in the texlive-science debian package:

sudo apt-get install texlive-science

The LaTeX packages that I have found useful and install on my system by default can be found in the install_latex.sh script in this repo.

You may also want a front-end (i.e. GUI editor) like TeXWorks, which is available in the Software Center for Ubuntu users, or here more generally. I think the Mac and Windows distributions come with some form of GUI-based editor already.

OSX

You should use MacTeX. You can do this with macports or homebrew by downloading the whole shabang from the website.

Windows

Install MikTeX.

5. How do I write LaTeX?

http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf

LyX

LyX is a WYSIWYG editor for LaTeX. I used to use it until I needed to format my dissertation, and then I switched to straight LaTeX. It has change tracking, however, which in my experience is crucial for collaborative paper writing.

TeXShop/TeXWorks

TeXShop (Mac only) and TeXWorks are simple front-ends for LaTeX that let you write the markup and see the rendering side by side.

Text Editors

Some folks will find the text editor option the most extensible and glorious. More power to them, but I am not one of those folks. (You'd just type pdflatex filename.tex in the command line to compile.)

6. How do I actually produce the document?

The GUI LaTeX editors all have their various buttons in the interface to convert your source files (.tex, .bib, etc.) into a finished document for viewing (.pdf). You can do the build steps yourself on the commandline. Traditionally, there are two steps to building a pdf file from the latex source. Assuming you have a latex document named 'report.tex':

latex report.tex
dvipdf report.dvi

The first step converts the .tex source into an intermediate dvi format, while the second converts the dvi into the familiar pdf. In practice, the dvi intermediate step is rarely used. There is a convenience command that accomplishes the entire build in one step:

pdflatex report.tex

NOTE

There is one quirk related to building LaTeX with internal references and/or a bibliography. For some reason (that I've never taken the time to understand), LaTeX requires two separate calls to latex to get the references right. This holds true for the bibliography as well (after building the bibliography with the bibtex command). The sequence of commands to properly build a LaTeX document with references (\ref) and/or a bibliography (name references.bib, in this example) is:

latex report.tex
bibtex report.aux
latex report.tex
latex report.tex
dvipdf report.dvi

Or, with pdflatex:

pdflatex report.tex
bibtex report.aux
pdflatex report.tex
pdflatex report.tex

If you don't include the second build step, the references and citations in your pdf won't be built properly and will likely show up as '?'.

Example time

One must learn by doing the thing; though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.

- Sophocles

An example of LaTeX in the wild that is most relevant to undergraduates is writing lab reports (you typically have to get through at least a couple lab classes before you start submitting your work to Nature). We'll use a lab report then as a skeleton example to learn some of the basics of LaTeX. For content, we'll focus on Arthur H. Compton's work on inelastic scattering of photons (which you'll encounter again if you take NE 101 and NE 104) to give us something to talk about in our report.

Stuff we'll try to cover

1. Make a basic doc
2. documentclass (article, beamer, exam, letter, book, others)
3. preamble
4. include packages
5. sections, subsections
6. labels, refs
7. itemize, enumerate
8. math, equations
9. include, includegraphics, input
10. bibliography
11. floats 1. table 2. figure

What are the Parts of a Document?

LaTeX documents have numerous parts.

The Preamble

In the preamble, there is a basic set of information that must be included in order to define the document. The real minimum set is just the "documentclass" parameter. Options include "article," "book," and "letter." Options concerning the paper format and the font can be specified in the square brackets while the documentclass type should be listed in the

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

inclusion of any packages that you rely on. Standard packages include "amsmath," "amsfonts," "amssymb," and graphicx.

\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amssymb}

If you are expecting a title to appear, parameters such as author and title should be filled in.

begin and end

You must begin and end the document.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\begin{document}

<stuff>

\end{document}

Now, that's it. To create a beautiful pdf, you can place this text in a file called doc.tex, and type "pdflatex doc.tex". You can also use the "latex" command to make DVI output, but I don't know what that is or why you'd want to.

The Title Elements

There are elements that help to define the title elements.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\author{The Hacker Within}
\title{Our New Document}

\begin{document}

<stuff>

\end{document}

Those variables are used by the maketitle command, which must be executed within the document boundaries.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\author{The Hacker Within}
\title{Our New Document}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

\end{document}

Books, Chapters, Sections, Subsections, Subsubsections, and Paragraphs

These are environments that define the hierarchy of your document.

Include and input

Rather than keep everything in one big file, you can include and input other latex files into a master. That acknowledgements section that you use in every paper? Keep it in its own file.