What is Reddit's opinion of MiKTeX?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

It is true, LaTeX can be frustrating.

The MikTeX package management system for Windows (http://miktex.org) and MacTeX for OS X (http://tug.org/mactex/) both ease that pain tremendously. MacTeX is an astoundingly large download for a LaTeX environment, but it comes with everything including the kitchen sink so whenever you find a guide saying "use the XYZ template," you almost certainly already have it.

If you use Vim (I know, I know), the LaTeX Suite plug-in provides a vast array of completions and mappings to make writing documents easier. With a small amount of tweaking you can get the preview command in MacVim to trigger a PDF build, and Preview for OS X will display updates to open documents automatically, which makes the workflow fairly seamless.

> Even given that you're in a stem field, the odds are you're a computer science major or computer engineer.

You're forgetting the "M" in STEM :)

Also, MikTeX is the way to go for windows.

To expand upon this answer, LaTeX is the markup language and typesetting program used by anyone serious about typing mathematics. You'll need to learn how to use it, but it's not very hard.

Step 1

Get an editor. Here are popular ones for Windows and Mac OSX.

Step 2

Learn the basics of writing LaTeX. The Wikibook is a pretty good resource. Don't worry about knowing everything; you'll learn how things work as you typeset more documents.

That's it! You can typeset math now!

A document markup language. It is fairly easy to learn and once you learn it, you'll never want to use MS Word again. It is heavily used in math (and I'm a Math major), but it is great for the sciences also.

for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX

for download: http://miktex.org/

If you don't want to learn the coding, they have GUI programs that do the coding for you.

It's called Computer Modern (Roman). The reason you see it a lot is because it's the default font for LaTeX, a typesetting program widely used in mathematics and sciences.

You can get the font file here, but it will lack all the beautiful LaTeXities. If you're using Windows, I'd recommend downloading MiKTeX.

I use MiKTeX and TeXnicCenter (install in that order). You just need to let TeXnicCenter know where you installed MiKTeX and you're all good. Don't worry about installing every package at first, you can always add them later.

There is no LaTeX “software” per se. First, you need to download and install the compiler - for Windows systems, use MikTeX.

Technically, as the LaTeX is just the core (compiler), you can write the documetns even in notepad and it will do just as fine. To make things easier however, there are packages like TeXstudio, which I'd strongly recommend using for nonautomated douments and teplates preparation.

It's not WYSIWYG editor per se, however what you once type in, it does not break up the formatting for no good reason later (looking at you, MS Word), and this is also a reason why it is heavily preffered in academia world for typesetting thesis and reports. It compiles to PDF in matter of seconds, so you can iterate very fastly, if needed.

Think html alike, but simpler. Plenty of free books and examples around the internet.

Eventhough it might look bit hostile to newcommer, it will long term pay off wery well.

Did I mentioned you can easily make it crunch *.csv files to produce a graph plot and nice formatted table also (yes, even in batches without manual changes to the document)? Also, no struggle with writing down just about any math equation you can think of.

Like somebody else here said, LaTeX is the way to go, though it does have a bit of a steep learning curve in the beginning. This link has nifty examples of what you type and what the output is.

You can find a common windows editor here

It builds flawlessly with PDFTeX (as best I can tell) via the MiKTeX distribution on Windows. You might like to mention that in the readme, maybe along the lines of "Unofficial but reported to be working..."

On a purely personal, aesthetic note: I always enable the Microtype Package. Though subtle, it really improves justified text.

If you're on a windows machine, use MikTeX 2.9. The 32 bit version is more stable, and when it asks you to "install missing packages on the fly" say YES. When it's all done, edit your documents in the (already installed) TeXworks program which should be in programs > MiKTeX 2.9 in your start menu. TeXworks's compilation is defaulted to output to PDF.

To insert images without learning TikZ do the following:

1. Create your image in an external program. (Paint, screenshot, gimp, whatever.)
2. Save your image as a .JP(E)G or .PNG in the same directory as your .TEX file.
3. Include \usepackage{graphicx} in your preamble (after \documentclass{article} and before \begin{document}.
4. Wherever you want to insert your image type:

\begin{center} \includegraphics[scale=0.75]{image.png} \end{center}

Centering and scaling is optional.

Best of luck, hope this helps!

Edit -- Formatting

Shouldn't be too difficult, Pandoc works on Windows and the MikTeX distribution too...and I think Cygwin has the capabilities to run makefiles on Windows...take this with a grain of salt though, I have no direct experience.

Try TeXworks - it's pretty self-contained. You'll have to install MiKTex as the typesetting engine, then go to preferences and tell TeXworks to use it - but it's pretty straightforward after that.

Both of them have .exe installers for windows. You just need to remember where you installed MikeTex, so you can designate it as your typesetting engine. It's usually in C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTex 2.9

I use MikTex when I'm on Windows, which is most of the time. My editor of choice is TeXnicCenter, which has pretty much all the conveniences you might want, including spell check. Add Ghostscript to the mix, and you're all set. With these, I've written most of my theses, papers and articles so far.

What exactly happens when you install Vim-Latex? Does the installation fail or does it just not work when you attempt (say) compile.

PS: I assume that you have already installed a latex distribution like Miktek and that latex/pdflatex executables are on your path?

The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e. It's surprisingly readable for a technical document, and you just need to read the first couple chapters to get the gist of it, then the rest of it is just a reference.

LaTeX's best (and naturally most robust/complicated) feature is its ability to typeset math, which I adore at work, but probably isn't needed for any typesetting that'll be done by fiction authors not named Neal Stephenson.

Edit: And if you actually want to use LaTeX, then just download MiKTeX if you use Windows, the Linux package is called texlive, and I think OS X uses texshop or something like that. (I loathe OS X, so I don't really know.)

Yeah, if you're a typography nerd it's tough to beat. If you're running Windows, MikTeX is the most user-friendly option, as it will install (some) packages (add-ons, fonts, etc.) for you. There is also, of course, r/latex. You'll want to use XeLaTeX if you want to use fonts installed on your system, as vanilla LaTeX uses its own.

Hoefler is probably my favorite older, 19th-century-esque font out there. I love fonts that look like something you would've seen on a printing press from that era. Plus it has the advantage of being legible in large blocks.

Brand new to linux. Just installed Mint Cinnamon 19.1 so don't assume any prior understanding. I am trying to get MiKTeX installed with texstudio and things seem to be fine but for some reason when i open texstudio id doesn't recognise any commands. The only thing I can find that doesn't seem correct is a message I get when executing

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"~$ sudo apt-get update"

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The console returns (at the end):

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N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'universe/binary-i386/Packages' as repository 'http://miktex.org/download/ubuntu bionic InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'i386'

​

Also, the executable files that are installed with miktex contain odd symbols/characters. Any help would be great. I've tried searching for hours but nothing seems to work...

​

Ah, this is different. It could well be that the version in the system that you downloaded was fresh but time has passed and now it is stale. For instance, I think (but am not sure) that expl3 is in this package: http://miktex.org/packages/l3kernel which has indeed recently been repackaged on MiKTeX.

Learn LaTeX. It's along the lines of a markup language (like HTML), and the results are incredibly professional (which is to be expected as it is used by professionals qutie a bit). The only software I've experienced that produces output of similar quality is Adobe's InDesign. LaTeX is also free, which great, and the number of packages that do all sorts of neat shit (from graphing/plotting, to "database" reading, to relatively secure text redaction (that can be turned on or off), to microtypographical adjustments...).

If you want to get started, MiKTeX is the TeX distribution of choice (well mine at least) for Windows. LaTeX has a bit of a learning curve to it, but once you get used to it, it's pretty damned awesome.

 

I've been considering whipping up some YouTube content, but stuff I'm good at is pretty boring (then again, look at LGR he's pretty popular...). Also been considering getting into game dev as well, but my own programming skill is mediocre at best, and I'm good at languages that are completely back-asswards for game dev (C, FORTRAN, and assembler (not x86/x86-64 though)).

I'd like to suggest you add LaTeX. Here is a short introduction to it: http://latex-project.org/intro.html. And here is a not so short guide to LaTeX: http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf.

LaTeX is the console that does all of the work, and you can use it entirely through the console, but most people use a GUI. Here's the one I use: http://miktex.org/. MikTeX is the only thing you need to download. Install that and start writing. It's completely free and very helpful.

"LaTeX is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents but it can be used for almost any form of publishing.

LaTeX is not a word processor! Instead, LaTeX encourages authors not to worry too much about the appearance of their documents but to concentrate on getting the right content."

Latex is the best system for that I think. You can type code(with special commands) into it and add documentation. This program has a high learning curve but Google can always help. If you are having too much trouble I can write a template for you.

I've got MikTex 2.9, to call from command line, simply call the binary:

example:
C:[path]> "C:/Dev/MiKTeX 2.9/miktex/bin/pdflatex.exe" basic.tex

This should spit out a pdf file in the same directory as the source file, here [path]\basic.pdf

You should be fine with 32bit miktex if you'd like. Shouldn't matter.