What are /r/LaTeX's favorite Products & Services?

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Another really good site: https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Tutorials

Has a lot of tutorials, templates and you can use Latex directly on there site, so you don't need to fuzz around setung up latex on your PC. Good place to get a first look

I use Inkscape. It is a vector graphics editor. It has a nice feature where you can do File > Save As > PDF and there is a checkbox: PDF + LaTeX: omit text in PDF, and create LaTeX file. Include this in your document and then it will render the PDF in LaTeX along with any text you put in while in InkScape, but the text will be generated by LaTeX at compile.

There was a post here a while ago that showed this off (albeit it showed a number of cool things off, so it may be confusing.)

Assuming you have relatively simple text formatting, I would suggest writing your document in markdown and then using pandoc to convert to LaTeX, EPUB, HTML, and whatever else you like.

Kindle can't read EPUB, but you can use calibre to convert from EPUB to AZW3 (Kindle format).

Look at the example of inline math in the overleaf tutorial: https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/mathematical_expressions#Mathematical_modes

You don’t need to put $$ around each argument, rather at the beginning and the end of the whole equation.

> It works

...when you're online only. Many of us like/need to write offline, e.g. while traveling, at cafes, and so forth. Even if you use Overleaf a majority of the time, it's still useful to have a local TeX distribution available for when you need to work offline. (Overleaf handily has git integration that allows you to work offline, provided you regularly git pull and git push.)

I myself prefer using LaTeX locally (TeX Live) so that I can use my editor of choice, vim, without which I am totally inefficient.

Directly in LaTeX. You can learn good habits such as breaking the sections in diferents .tex files and including then in your main.tex later. By writing it directly you can see your errors easily. If you want a good way to write your document without instaling anything and having already lots of packages you should go for sharelatex or overleaf.

It sounds like you may like org-mode in Emacs. It's not quite the same as markdown, but the idea behind the syntax is fairly similar. You can write out equation using Latex (just put $$...$$ in your writing), and also you can embed longer sections of pure Latex as needed. It can export to pure Latex as well. It does a whole bunch of other stuff too, so it can be a bit overwhelming at first. But if you're not opposed to using Emacs then you should check it out.

"Surely, they will soon turn their efforts to implement mathematical notation", I've been thinking for years now. Also, I don't get why they don't give you a preview of your comment as you type it, along with other essential features that Reddit Enhancement Suite provides.

LuaLatex is a compiler that comes pre-loaded in TeXworks, and works right out of the box. You can get it to work with other packages, or standalone - but I use it with TeXworks because I like the instant-gratification of the PDF view in split-screen.

It accepts any regular Lua code from basic arithmetic to heavy, iterated computations. I use it to open and read files, perform computations on the data, then print the data nicely into my LaTeX document - all done automatically.

One guy even wrote a paper on how to do hardcore numerical methods including Runge-Kutta differential equation solutions in LuaLatex. That's how powerful it can be if you want.

Anyways, all you have to do is include the luacode header ( \usepackage{luacode} ), and declare the numbers you will be using as variables at the top of your document in a block of code:

\begin{luacode*} x = 22 y = 44 z = x*y \end{luacode*}

From there you can recall any Lua variables or perform computations on them at any point in your text with the directlua escape sequence: For example:

"The answer is: \directlua{tex.print(x)}."

which will give you

"The answer is 22."

or

Y/X is \directlua{tex.print(y/x)}.

which will typeset as

"Y/X is 2."

Here is how that sentence would appear in your doc:

Here's a statement from a paper \cite{wilsonjohn} and these data show that the sun is actually a banana, see table \cref{table:sunbanana}.

You would have a file with name thesis.bib (see the part starting with Bibliography management with Bibtex in this introduction). As to the table reference, you might have this.

This table shows the sun is a banana. \begin{table} \ref{table:sunbanana} \centering \begin{tabular}{r|l} the sun &a banana \ the moon &green cheese \end{tabular} \end{table}

Seeing that it's open-source and distributed by reputable sites like CTAN (since a long time, apparently) I'd say you have nothing to worry about.

You should definitely give pandoc a try. For not too complicated documents it's extremely usable and can convert for example from TeX to .docx. I generally write in Markdown and export for further use into TeX.

Here's a gist on GitHub with a tiny sample document and the make file I use for starting all my documents.

Overleaf has git integrated in its product. https://www.overleaf.com/learn/how-to/Using_Git_and_GitHub

You can continue working on your local editor and push / pull using git, while your collaborators can continue working on overleaf.

Free accounts may not have git access. If even one of your collaborators has a paid account, then you can make that collaborator as the primary owner of the project to have git access for it.

Looks very similar to this one: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/faangpath-simple-template/npsfpdqnxmbc

A more “modern” interpretation would be this one: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/resume-template/ysrmnrwyrhpp

Are you talking about SageMath, the mathematics software? If so, that and ShareLaTeX are two totally different things.

SageMath (previously, Sage) is software for doing advanced mathematics. It's a free and open-source alternative to software like MATLAB.

ShareLaTeX is an online LaTeX editing and compiling platform. LaTeX is a document preparation (typesetting) system. While LaTeX is technically a full-fledged programming language, its purpose is to typeset documents, not to do advanced mathematics.

Comparing SageMath and ShareLaTeX is a bit like comparing MATLAB and an online Word editor.

ShareLaTeX founder here, you need to upload the res.cls ( probably this https://www.math.nyu.edu/student_resources/res.cls) or use a template with it included (https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/cv-or-resume)

Your English is fine.

You are doing the right thing to think about licenses. People who just say "Oh, whatever" may well only cause confusion.

And thank you for being generous with your work.

I do think that for a person who does not know much about licenses and only wants a suitable one, the Creative Commons site is very useful, with legally sensibly licenses and not too many of those.

Personally, I use Creative Commons Share Alike, but of course a different one may suit your circumstances.

I personally need a good physical keyboard, an editor with VIM bindings, and two monitors are also very handy. I like to have the document open, the editor and one or two browser windows.

Nevertheless: I think Overleaf can be used on mobile and is not even bad. I've used it for a project with a friend of mine and the cool thing was that I could just go to some computer and continue working on the project.

1. Download the template. Compress it into a .zip file.
2. Sign up for ShareLatex.
3. Upload the .zip file. From Your Projects page: New Project > Upload Project.
4. Edit the template with your info. It's really not as hard as you think. You'll find lots of examples of the basics in that template, and ShareLatex has a good documentation center.
5. 'Compile' to see the generated pdf.
6. Download the pdf when you're satisfied.
7. Don't lose money when you could easily gain a new skill.

You can use MathPix (https://mathpix.com/) to generate LaTeX of screen grabs, and/or upload a whole pdf to convert it into LaTeX code (not always 100% correct, but mostly is). You get a certain number of screen grabs for free per month, and can also upload one whole pdf (under 10mb) for free too.

Generally all that stuff you are doing in your preamble can be separated out into a mythesis.sty file, and some universities provide (or used to provide in some cases) a university-thesis.sty file that does all that to match the particular institution's requirements. Or sometimes students have made one. As an example, Overleaf has this one for Stanford PhD theses

So, yeah, it's mostly about getting the style details right, and then a little bit about having convenient and semantic macros included (e.g., \firstreader{}).

This probably won't be the best answer, as in I don't have a proper 'LaTeX way' to do it, but figured I'd weigh in with some thoughts because I've been in this boat many times.

What I've personally settled on is using inkscape for drawing circuit diagrams, with grid snapping enabled to get a consistent appearance. If you use plugins like circuitsymbols from fsmMLK, you can get a built-in library of circuit symbols to work with, and even have LaTeX-like labels built in (assuming you use computer modern roman). Since this gives you a vector output, diagrams like this will definitely look way better than screenshots from KiCAD or something like that, and will be nice and lean too.

I had a colleague that swore by xcircuit for generating his circuit diagrams, as it gives you postscript that you can include easily and gives a good output, but I could never get over the awful interface.

Ultimately I think the 'perfect' solution for circuit diagrams in LaTeX would be something like a a macro layer for CircuitTikZ that makes it a bit less painful to implement, or even just a graphical interface that lets you place components visually and produces CircuitTikZ code. I don't think either of these things exist yet though; I've thought about working on something like this in the past, but software isn't my strong point.

Hope this at least gives you some options to think about, even if it doesn't strictly solve your problem.

I have been using LaTex for 6+ years and the best and easiest way for me is to draw everything in Inkscape then save the drawings as .svg or even PNG and use \includegraphics to place them in your document.

In the preamble (before \begin{document}), you can define your custom commands:

\newcommand{\R}{\textit{R}} \newcommand{\T}{\si{\Theta}}

\begin{document} This is \R{} and \T{}.

Creating custom commands

These people are having the same issue

It seems that the way TeXStudio saves files is somehow conflicting with the way Dropbox handles its syncing on Windows.

Several folks report:

> I temporarily got rid of the issue by downgrading to TeXstudio 2.10.8.

So, for now, either:

• use an older version of TeXStudio
• don't save directly from TeXStudio to a Dropbox folder
• don't use TeXStudio

(unrelated, when you compile a TeX file insode a Droobox folder, dozens or more temporary files are created, changed, or deleted, and Dropbox struggles to sync all that.... for no good reason, since the contents of temp files only matter for the few seconds that the compile process is underway. I highly recommend using a version control system like git to manage your TeX project history, and if you want auto backups doing a system that will let you ignore the temp files, or better yet, only sync the PDF if your source is in version control)

When I wrote my linear algebra book the best I could find was the systeme package. Unfortunately the documentation is in French but there are plenty of code examples in there to get you through.

The command

\systeme{12y+3x+3z=-36, 8y-3x+2z=-4, 20y+5z}

gets you the alignment you showed in your picture but without the plus sign and the horizontal line. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to do the plus sign and horizontal line with the systeme package.

If you really need the exact picture then your best bet is probably to use the tabular environment. It is more cumbersome but it will get the job done since you have a lot of control over alignment and spacing. Here are some examples with tables.

To learn anything in LaTeX, use templates first. Once you have gained enough experience working with them (and editing them to your needs), you can create your own work.
For templates: https://www.overleaf.com/

Just FYI, gnuplot has LaTeX optimized output built in. It can output a ps/eps image together with TeX code for the text lables.

Check out section 5 and 6 of http://www.gnuplot.info/files/tutorial.pdf

Which operating system do you use?

If windows, i personally use the combination of MikTex as Tex-distribution, TexnicCenter as Editor and SumatraPDF as Viewer. All those programs are for free. This combination even supports forward and inverse search (you can click in the code and automatically jumps to the corresponding part in the pdf and the other way round).

http://www.texniccenter.org/

One thing I really like about this editor, is its ability working with projects. You have one main tex-file, which is always used when compiling. It doesn't matter in which tex file you currently work. This makes it super easy splitting up your document in several files.

Other editors although have a similar feature, but not as easy to use as in TexnicCenter.

Another reply said git but the full suggestion would be use git on your computer and then use a service like GitHub to host and share your project repository.

The way it works is:

1. You use git to make a local repository on your computer. The repository contains all of your project files (PDF and .tex).
2. When you make changes, you commit the files locally, which saves the changes in git.
3. You then push the repository that includes the committed changes to the remote repository (in this case at GitHub).
4. Someone else that works with you can look at the files in GitHub, and clone the entire repository onto their own computer. You can also use GitHub to view the changes and leave comments on them.

I use git on Linux so I just use the command line. If you are on a Windows computer or a Mac, you can use the GitHub desktop client (https://desktop.github.com/).

Live preview is overrated in my opinion. When learning, you want to typeset (compile) the document often to see your changes. When you got the basics down, it's not important per se; you can imagine how the document will look.

For learning, there's a ton of ressources on the internet. I like this one. Honestly, you don't want wysiwg. When you've used LateX for a while and beaten the initial learning curve, you won't go back to MS Word.

For OS X there's a bunch of editors. I've heard good things about texmaker. I personally use Vim with a bunch of plugins. In the end it's a matter of personal preference.

You need two things. First and foremost, you need a TeX distribution. I highly recommend MiKTeX. After that, you could start writing in a simple text editor. However, pretty much everyone uses a specialized TeX editor, and for that I recommend Texmaker. Such a program will make it easier to write LaTeX commands, compile it, view the output, etc. Which editor you use is mostly a matter of taste, but I highly recommend against some popular ones like WinEdt and Texworks.

Ah, makes sense. This isn't actually my work, it's for a course in composites. The professor has a hard-on for precise, arbitrary formatting in Microsoft Word, and I don't want to spend the majority of my time on something that's irrelevant to the actual content I'm learning and need to write about.

Edit: Playing around with this and searching Google probably took me around an hour with not much to show for. http://www.filedropper.com/apppage1

Edit 2: It would be more like someone asking for a template in which to do their math homework

Welcome to the community!

Get an account on Overleaf (start with a free one) and then work your way through <em>lshort2e</em>. At that point you'll then know more than most people who use LaTeX.

If you cared to click the links they provided in the message, you'd have known.

From (read more):

> ShareLaTeX users: The first time you log-in to ShareLaTeX on or after the 4th September, your account will be transferred to Overleaf v2. Everything you’re used to in ShareLaTeX is available in Overleaf v2, along with some other great features like rich-text editing and submitting to journals.

Or if you just clicked the try Overleaf v2 now link you could've TRIED the thing yourself, on your own project.

-- But that's non of my business

You can put this into the preamble and it will work as intended:

\newcommand{\mc}[1]{multicolumn{2}{|c|}{\textbf{#1}}}

Example of document

Wiki article about commands

I just compiled your exact files with latexmk and it seemed to work fine. However, you could try to start with a working example on Overleaf, here: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/examples/bibliographies-with-biber-and-biblatex/ccrkczqwnywf

Here's something I just put together. Your lecturer sounds like a complete dick. I hope I don't need to explain that the point of LaTeX is that you don't have to pick the fonts and spacing etc. Consequently it's actually quite hard to do that.

I haven't picked the right fonts, sizes, margins or written a bibliography.

I did vectorise the graph, so you can actually see it when you zoom in. Also, having the date and subject on the same line is quite tricky. The date isn't flush with the right margin. I don't know why.

https://www.overleaf.com/2502289vsspzy

Do you have to do it in LaTeX? That chart looks like it was made with Excel to me. In any event, it's gonna be way easier to use some external software and include the result as an image. Matplotlib for instance. Doing it in LaTeX is kinda clunky IMO, but you could do it with pgfplots.

TeXworks !

Wiki with screenshot.

Edit: added bonus: if you call any \usepackage{} that you don't have, it auto-downloads it in the background, so you don't have to install . .

You could try TeXworks.

Forgive me, I can't resist adding my $0.02: a large percentage of posts here are not about LaTeX but are instead about how the person is wrestling with whatever wrapper program that person is using. You could do a lot worse than to pick emacs (what I use, FWIW) or vi to input the LaTeX, and then occasionally compile by hand, and update the viewer by hand.

I've had this same issue with using fullpage and fancyhdr before. Try using the geometry package to change the margins instead. Link on how to do that.

Side note, your minimum working example is horrible.

If it's a one time thing and you want to keep your file structure as is, you can search and replace downloaded source files on your computer. Visual Studio Code can search and replace whole directories, no problem.

> If anyone has a cleaner solution to do this at the start of all algorithm environments, let me know!

Define a custom environment.

\newenvironment{AlgFromZero} { \begin{algorithm} \setcounter{ALG@line}{-1} } { \end{algorithm} }

This should work?

The not so short introduction to LaTeX is a very comprehensive intro.

Playing around with templates on something such as Overleaf is a great way to just get stuck in, they also have their own tutorials

sami-1010 makes a good suggestion for what you’re trying to do. Lists of tables separated from the ToC are customary in technical reports and books. All you have to do is surround your tabular material in a table environment and LaTeX will keep track of them. Check this out.

But if you really want them in the ToC without the redundancy, maybe remove the title of the table (top row) from your tabular content, leaving only the subsection as the title?

Such is academics – especially someone in the humanities :) Did you take a look at this small Overleaf document that demonstrates the commenting? (There are likely better solutions; this is just a proof-of-concept – I'm not in these positions anymore.)

You may also be interested in my question on TeX.SX that draws together brownie-points for humanities work in LaTeX :) Might not be anything in there that will induce a change of heart for a stubborn professor, but certainly enough in there to encourage you continuing with LaTeX :)

If it's allowed, I would certainly consider taking the final draft and typesetting it with TeX – with a straight-up paper (sections, paragraphs, footnotes, etc.), it should be a minimal time-investment. If you can't get your professor to work with you, it might be possible to demonstrate why you use LaTeX. I've run into the problem where professors think I'm just pompous for using something different and I've found this helps :)

What I would probably do is first convert each jpg into pdf and then glue all the pdfs into one pdf.

To convert jpg -> pdf, download ImageMagick, and then from the command line run something like:

for f in /path/to/images/*.jpg; do convert "$f" $(basename -s .jpg "$f").pdf done

(This is what I would do on Linux, at least. basename is a GNU core utility.)

Now that you have a bunch of pdfs, you can combine them with pdfjam, which comes with TeX Live.

$ cd /path/to/images $ pdfjam -o myoutput.pdf -- *.pdf

I think it depends on the platform you're using as well as what editor you prefer. Any more details?

In the interim, you might look at this:

http://gummi.midnightcoding.org/?page_id=2

I've not used it, but it looks promising.

I think you're needing to define a new environment for your block. I haven't tested it, but I suspect something like:

\newenvironment{snippet} {\begin{verbatim}} {\end{verbatim}}

You could then change the definition of 'snippet' to suit whichever output you'd like.

maybe try using sharelatex.com instead. that way you don't have to deal with any of the local installation headaches.

this looks interesting, but i didn't look very far into it: https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/bibliographies/biblatex

We wrote a tutorial on circuitikz just over a year ago: https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2013/09/02/tikz-series-pt4.html. It introduces and covers most of the basics. Would be interested to get your feedback :).

Of course, there is also the full documentation (perhaps for reading after the tutorial): http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/ctan.org/graphics/pgf/contrib/circuitikz/circuitikzmanual.pdf

>As for an editor, I love [2] MiKTeX for PC.

If I'm not mistaken MikTeX is an implementation of LaTeX for windows, and the editor that comes with it is called TeXworks. In either case if you're using windows you will want to use MikTeX, and TeXworks is a pretty good editor. I would also recommend TeXmaker for beginners.

As pointed out it's mainly a PDF problem, but this stackoverflow discussion asks about it:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9009771/is-it-possible-to-embed-animated-gifs-in-pdfs

And it links to this one about pdflatex:

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/5396/is-there-any-way-to-include-an-animated-gif-directly/

I've never tried it with beamer, but this is at least a start

from 2009, " This paper presents the design and implementation of a concurrent trace-based JIT that uses novel lock-free synchronization to trace, compile, install, and stitch traces on a separate core such that the interpreter essentially never needs to pause. Our evaluation shows that this design reduces the total, average, and maximum pause time by 89%, 97%, and 93%, respectively compared to the base single-threaded JIT system. Our design also improves throughput by 6% on average and up to 34%, because it delivers optimized application code faster. This design provides a better end-user experience by exploiting multicore hardware to improve responsiveness and throughput" https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Concurrent-Trace-based-Just-InTime-Compiler-for-Ha-McKinley/273a77fd02812b3b600825d8fd8d6afa2866d90e

"Traditionally, web browsers relied entirely on the CPU to render web page content. With capable GPUs now an integral part of even the smallest of devices, attention has turned on finding ways to more effectively use this underlying hardware to achieve better performance and power savings. Using the GPU to composite the contents of a web page can result in very significant speedups." https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/gpu-accelerated-compositing-in-chrome

My thesis is on github, feel free to use it for inspiration. Here is a pdf. Note that it uses non-free fonts though.

As the 'true' Times New Roman font is proprietary you have to buy it individually (or it is shipped with a Windows license). ~~Hence Overleaf will not provide it to you.~~

Luckily there are plenty of identical looking alternatives.

T1 fonts - times (obsolete) - mathptm (obsolete) - mathptmx (obsolete, psnfss) - txfonts - newtx (newtx­text, newtx­math, supersedes txfonts)

• tgtermes (TeX Gyre project)

• stix (obsolete)

• stix2-type1

OTF and TTF (LuaLaTeX or XeLaTeX required, fontspec) - STIX Two Text - XITS - TeX Gyre Termes

*Edit: * Actually they provide a version of a times like font: https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/XeLaTeX, open the first example (XeLaTeX, LuaLaTeX only).

For the first question, I usually play with \big \Big \bigg \Bigg if \left/\right is not working well. See e.g. https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Brackets_and_Parentheses

For the second question, more code is needed, what environment are you using? However I suspect (1.3) is centered when you take into account the huge brackets. If you are using split it should be centered, if you want it in the second line you can use align with \nonumber to disable numbering of the upper line.

If you can create a basic layout for the paper, lab report, etc. and copy it for future assignments then there shouldn't be much programming after the initial templates. Overleaf may be good when you first start since it gives instant feedback to changes in the .tex document, and you don't have to install anything.

> My problem right now is how big a pain in the ass it is to type equations in Word. Does it really make it that much easier?

Kind of? Once I got the basics of creating equations, and tables, down I found it a lot easier.

I've recently stumbled upon a tool called plasTeX. It doesn't convert to ePub directly, rather, it converts to HTML. After that, you can use pandoc to convert the HTML to ePub. I was happy with the result for a simple document, though you might run into problems with your book.

It's important to say that pandoc also converts from LaTeX to ePub, but I wasn't very happy with the results.

However, I agree with you completely, we need a solid LaTeX to ePub converter. Pandoc seems to be progressing rapidly, I hope it evolves into a viable solution soon.

You could just use the <em>ucharclasses</em> package to specify throughout the document what font to use for Cyrillic and what font to use for the Latin alphabet.

Or you could use \renewcommand, but that would just shorten the length of the command, not the argument, as far as I know.

You can do this quite easily with the parcolumns package. Example code might look like:

\begin{parcolumns}[colwidths={1=0.3\textwidth}]{2} \colchunk{ First column } \colchunk{ Second Column } \end{parcolumns}

Note the colwidths option which is telling it to set the first column to 0.3 or 30% of the width of page. The other column then automatically takes up the remaining space.

I've created a more complete example here

That's nothing like what OP's question is looking for.

Mathpix is a specialized OCR tool that when given an image of a formula returns LaTeX source code that (hopefully) generates a similar output.

Try using a different editor like Texmaker. I found that took care of all the configuring and left me with the job of writing. And I found it much nicer than Texniccenter to work with.

>VS Code collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services ...
>
>If you don't wish to send usage data to Microsoft, you can set the telemetry.enableTelemetry user setting to false.

-- https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/faq#_how-to-disable-telemetry-reporting

(i'm an Emacs user as well. :-) )

LaTeX is written in plain text, so you can use any editor you want. Notepad, sublime text 3, visual studio code, vim etc. Personally I use vim with the UltiSnips plugin, but I wouldn’t recommend that to beginners. I haven’t used this personally, but try looking at Visual Studio Code’s snippets (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/userdefinedsnippets), it’s a really versatile editor geared towards programmers.

You have to add: \bibliographystyle{} to choose the reference style, as well as \bibliography{} to point BibTEX at the .bib file where the cited references should be looked-up. For style, you can use plain as input for start, otherwise check the documentation for different choices. The other one wants the name of your bib file as input, so library.bib

In the text you use \cite with the cite keys as defined in your bib file.

For a better insight you can check: Bibliography management

I forgot that the correct word for it in LaTeX is "commands" (as opposed to methods, functions, etc.) But you would overwrite the command which generates individual bibliography entries. So find what command the "/bibliography" command calls (e.g. find in the documentation the definition of how singular bibliography entries can be called) and copy its definition and edit it with /renewcommand. Please note that you'd need to ensure the QR codes are large enough to be scanned in print, which could be difficult for exceptionally long URLs (unless everything you're citing has a DOI).

If you're using biblatex, your preamble should include:

\usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex} \addbibresource{mybibliography.bib}file

and in the end, you should have:

\printbibliography

BibLaTeX in Overleaf

This may not be too helpful, but I found it really beneficial to download some LaTeX source files from online for other people’s lecture notes, projects, etc. and write a few of my own documents based on adapting those. From there, I picked up the skills and know how to be able to write my own documents and then became able to write my own class files (that’s a really useful skill to have!).

No matter how fluent you get though, it’s important to remember that you won’t know EVERYTHING off by heart. When you don’t know how to do something, Google is your friend. Overleaf have some great pages as I’m sure you’re aware (https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Tables for example) and these can be really useful.

LaTeX is something that you’ll learn best by doing though. There unfortunately doesn’t exist any good online course (that I’m aware of anyway) and so it is a case of just having a mess around with it and working on a document to learn with. You’ll become confident in no time!

The documentation on the overleaf website is second to none (the equivalent of the Arch manual for LaTex!). I've googled various "how to do X in LaTex" and often the overleaf website will come up, and when it does I've always gotten a superb article.

https://www.overleaf.com/learn

So, this citation style is by default defined without brackets of any kind, check if one of the other allready existing styles fits your usecase allready.

I personally like the alphabetic style, which also incorperates the authors name and the year. Maybe you can use it.

If you really want to moddify the existing style, here is explaint how. It is a little more complitaced though

You mean a URL as part of the blibliography? Then you have to use biblatex or bibtex or a similar package to book-keep your blibliography. Then you can cite your references with the cite command. At the end of the document, you can print your bibliography file in whatever style you chose. Overleaf has a tutorial on it.

Here there are also some instructions on how to format a URL reference in the bibliography file.

from another non-latex system. AsciiDoc (or asciiDoctor) is one system. Another is to write in markdown, and then use pandoc to convert to ePub.

See: http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/publishing-ebooks-with-asciidoc.html

Agreed. I believe the given link is for the live document OP is working from. That's a bit dangerous since people can delete your code? But anyways, I think I fixed the error. It was "} on line 248, which caused something to go wrong with the grouping brace. I replaced it with '' (two single quotes), which is the correct way to write quotes in LaTeX. Here is more info on why.

No - this was a good thread, you have nothing to be sorry for!

The point I'm trying to make is that the issue isn't solely with LaTeX - it's about the dearth of good tooling around LaTeX. Part of the reason there isn't as much good tooling is that LaTeX is open-source and highly extensible, whereas Word is closed-source and controlled by Microsoft. I personally have no problems with Word being closed / controlled by Microsoft - they have to respond to market pressures and the fact is that most people don't care about perfection, just fast and good-enough. Then, in the cases where you have to have perfection, LaTeX is there to pick up the slack.

In my opinion, they're different tools for different purposes.

I will say that I'm intrigued to see what Overleaf has been doing on improving table support: (read the section for &quot;Graham Douglas&quot; in their annual review blog post)

You can do this, for instance, between paragraphs.

\vspace*{1in}

Welcome to the community! Basic LaTeX is pretty straightforward. You can pick it up without too much trouble. With a free account on Overleaf, spend an afternoon working through <em>lshort2e</em>. At that point you will know more than most LaTeX users.

Have a look at bibliography styles and citation styles.

Yes, a bib file is just a collection of references, formatted like this:

@book{galilei1610, title={Sidereus Nuncius}, author={Galilei, G.}, year={1610}, publisher={Thomas Baglioni} }

Here is some documentation on using natbib/bibtex with Overleaf: https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Bibliography_management_with_natbib

MWE = Minimum Working Example. Basically the text where the problem is.

If you want to use the Chicago style with biblatex, you can use

`\usepackage[style=chicago-authordate]{biblatex}

https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Biblatex_citation_styles

I've used Sharelatex (now Overleaf v2) years ago for my bachelor's thesis as well as two paper-like works just recently. It really is a fantastic tool for me and nothing I'm missing really in terms of features. There wasn't a package I couldn't use and using own .sty was no problem either, have you validated that the limitations you're taking about still exist today?

I've heard they have a rich text mode now so people unfamiliar with Latex will have an easier time, haven't tried that one myself though.

You should be able to put \newcommand{\hegel}{\textsc{Hegel}, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich} in your preamble, then just do

\index{\hegel}

for a shortcut.

Edit:

Here is a link to an example of it working: https://www.overleaf.com/read/gczhbqmwzwxv#/64453877/

Honest question:

You're a coder, right? Do you often work on projects with a completely blank slate and begin from nothing, or do you start by modifying templates or pre-generated code?

In 99% of all my coding experience, I'm modifying code. I barely ever start from scratch. Latex is no different.

Quickly googling for "latex math template" yields

https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/math#.WgR6E9-YVFE

with several fairly straightforward options that showing basic equations being set.

I really am sorry you're having trouble and understand your frustration, but we also don't expect people to pick up C in 30 minutes, or really any other language.

You may enjoy "LyX" as it may seem more intuitive for you.

Homework formats might be different for different classes so be careful there. Overleaf homework templates should give you quite a few to choose from. I also have my own homework template I am willing to share if you message me.

First off, the margins are changing every other page because of the twoside option. Take that out if you don't want that. Second, the margins are weird because fancyhdr still thinks the margins are 1.5 in or whatever. Move the \usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry} to before \usepackage{fancyhdr} to fix that part.

Fixed.

Seeing LaTeX as a way to "automate" certain tasks might be the wrong approach. Writing formulae is tedious in any editor, language or application. Nothing beats pen and paper here.

In case you want to mix the worlds of Markdown and LaTeX, I'd suggest you take a look at Pandoc and especially this usage example.

I strongly recommend you download TeXLive from here, and manually install it.

DO NOT USE sudo apt-get install texlive-full. It breaks TeXLive into multi-packages and leaves you without LaTeX packages manager.

There is a link to TexLive 2010 iso torrent here.

This is actually what I used to get texlive installed on my linux laptop because the net installer was getting stuck for some reason.

IIRC, you can't compile \includegraphics{*.eps} with pdflatex, but only with latex & dvipdf.

If you want to compile a tex file with some .eps in it, your options are to use latex & dvipdf or to convert the eps into something else.

If you want to convert it, you should probably use ImageMagick. A simple convert image.eps image.png should work, but might yield something rather pixelated.

Of course, if you want to include both eps and {png,pdf,gif…} in one TeX document, you're going to have to convert.

I use TeXnic Center, which imports and installs packages for you, but I'm not sure that's the easiest one to configure and install. (I can't remember; it's been so long since I installed it)

If you're writing a relatively simple document, have your co-authors write in markdown using a plain text editor, and then convert to latex with pandoc. If they aren't already familiar with markdown, it should take less than 15 minutes to learn the basics.

If you're writing a more complex document (with lots of formulas, figures, special characters, etc.), you may be out of luck unless you want to volunteer to code it all yourself in latex.

You need to get git cheat sheet from https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitCheatSheet which shows workflow. I have this on desk to remind me.

Git online book at http://git-scm.com/docs.

On my machine, create folder and run git init, to start setting up, then git add/commit as I work. Once enough done, I then create repository on github which becomes master, and I push my (local) to the master for others to start working on. They clone to their machines, do work, and then commit back to their own repo to allow me to pull into the master on my account. I resolve any conflicts. The others can then do a git pull, which updates their copy. In some cases, I add them as a contributor if we are working on separate parts of the documents, to allow them to contribute direct to the master copy.

I have done a fair bit of work using tex/latex both with vim and lyx for educational resources, but recently have started using sisu as it lets me produce pdf as well as epub and websites in one pass.

Look here on how to use \fancyhdr for pagenumbers.

Try replacing \gobble with \rfoot{Page \thepage}, as the example shows.

The latex template would be a .cls. Not easy to do as a begginer but still doable. Then the script is something that output the proper header (using your custom class), the proper footer and put proper \chapter{} \section{} and the like for the title, and that part is probably trivial once you have an abstract syntax tree of the text (do you have that ?).

The section should be called "References" by default, even with the IEEETR style: see Bibtex bibliography styles. Without a complete example of what you're doing, it's hard to say why yours is being printed as "Bibliography".

This sounds like the default view in ShareLatex, which is what I usually use. I have heard that if the document is sufficiently long (e.g. a thesis) it may take a very long time to recompile and show the updates each time. While this hasn't been an issue for me writing course papers and homework assignments, it may be something to watch out for.

Here's something that might help you get started on the first example:

\documentclass[border=10pt]{standalone}

\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document} \begin{tikzpicture} % Draw a grid 10 units high by 10 units wide \draw[thin, gray, step=1cm] (0,0) grid (10,10);

% Draw some points and label them \filldraw (0,0) circle (2pt) node[anchor=north west] {$(0,0)$}; \filldraw (5.5, 4.5) circle (2pt) node[anchor=west] {$a$};

% Draw axes and labels \draw[thick, ->] (0,0) -- node[anchor=north,midway] {$L_a$} (10,0); \draw[thick, ->] (0,0) -- node[anchor=east,midway] {$R_a$} (0,10); \end{tikzpicture} \end{document}

edit: also take a look at this

Mac OS X

edit: I just found this site https://www.sharelatex.com which has made it very easy to start using latex. Now, one other question i have is how do I set up keyboard shortcuts that enable the use of mathematical symbols while I'm typing in latex?

You can do this in a few ways with XeLaTeX, but a solution which will also work in LaTeX is to enclose the text you want to change the font of in

{\fontfamily{cmr}\selectfont Text here }

where 'cmr' is the fontcode for Computer Modern Roman, the default LaTeX font.

Check out https://www.overleaf.com and https://www.sharelatex.com too. They're web-based editors, but might be helpful.

Edit: I forgot to mention, there are a bunch of templates on there to draw inspiration from as well. Have fun!