Hot answers tagged latex-project
158
Hypothetical dialogue follows.
Dear <insert subject name here>,
I would like to spend a few minutes talking about something cool. In fact, it's not just cool. It's amazingly cool. It's not "Albert Einstein playing guitar" cool, neither "Abraham Lincoln riding a bear with a machine gun" cool, it's way more superb. Believe me, it's super duper ultra ...
140
If people ask me what LaTeX is, I explain it like this:
Imagine you wrote a book and want to publish it. You, as an author, are good at writing and explaining stuff but you don't know how to "design" it.
When your book looks like this, you wouldn't earn a penny, selling it:
What you need is someone how is trained at making text readable and looking ...
85
A very common use of LaTeX is for automatic generation of high quality PDF reports that present the results of some routine analysis. For example, given some hydrology data in CSV format:
Date,Flow
2011-12-20,112
2011-12-21,109
2011-12-22,108
2011-12-23,106
2011-12-24,103
2011-12-25,105
2011-12-26,105
2011-12-27,102
2011-12-28,107
2011-12-29,202
...
75
The biggest change has been that now pdftex is the default engine for latex. However, unless you write packages, you do not need to be aware of the differences. There is also a lot of momentum in LaTeX3, but most of the code is used behind the scenes by other packages. Again, unless you are a package writer, you do not need to learn anything new here.
Many ...
72
To start with the examples: Deutsche Bahn, the german railway company, is using LaTeX (or at least TeX, I'm not sure) to format timetables of any kind, including the large tables hanging in the stations, the individual station-wise or connection-wise schedules for download (in many different ways), etc. Also, some smaller public transportation companies use ...
65
\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{tgpagella}
\usepackage{dtklogos}
\begin{document}
\Large
\XeTeX \\ \XeLaTeX \\
\AmS \\ \AmSLaTeX \\
\AMSLaTeX \\ \AmSTeX \\
\AMSTEX \\ \AMSTeX \\
\BibTeX \\ \LAMSTeX \\
\LamSTeX \\ \La \\
\LaTeX \\ \LaTeXTeX \\
\MF \\ \MFun \\
\MP \\ \SLITEX ...
65
Being aware of the fact that this post is quite old, I would like to add two further resources which might be interesting when it comes to programming.
I think there are three categories which need to be mastered (perhaps not all in the same degree) in order to become comfortable around TeX programming:
TeX programming. That's very basic, it deals with ...
56
I find the comparison posted http://www.zinktypografie.nl/latex.php?lang=en to be very effective- here's a visual
If the visual isn't enough, check out the analysis!
Where IWS is the inter-word spacing and SD, stands for Standard Deviation, a measure of the variability of IWS (as computed by the square root of the average square deviation from the mean ...
55
(My apologies in advance for any "too long; didn't read" sentiments -- if you only read one thing out of this, make it this link: Best Way to Start Using LaTeX/TeX?)
My Non-Expert Background:
I started using LaTeX around 2002 to help engineering students at my university write their M.S. theses and PhD dissertations.
For several years, I made basic ...
52
TeX is both a program (which does the typesetting) and format (a set of macros that the engine uses). Looked at in either way, TeX gives you the basics only. If you read the source for The TeXBook, you'll see that Knuth wrote more macros to be able to typeset the book, and made a format for that.
LaTeX is a generalised set of macros to let you do many ...
51
Aditya has mentioned packages, and Jan has mentioned engines, but there has also been lots of infrastructure developments that make dealing with LaTeX more convenient:
A new cross-platform editor, TeXworks, that (I think) is the easiest way to get started with LaTeX because of its simple interface and embedded PDF viewer
For TeX Live, an update mechanism ...
51
TeXies have a good chance of recognizing TeXed documents, especially if Computer Modern (or Latin Modern) is used. But assuming you want to convert Word-users and other heathens, figuratively speaking, you could use a colophon, a "brief description of publication or production notes relevant to the edition, in modern books usually located at the reverse of ...
43
I think a resume is more typesetting than word processing, so I would not use MS Word or OOo Writer. One could use Indesign or a free layout program.
Often resumes contain text in columns. Text in narrow columns is hard to wrap--TeX does a good job here. For even better justification use microtype with pdfLaTeX. I think with microtype the chance to avoid ...
37
Yes, we really work crazy hours (not only) in evenings and weekends (where other academics would spend time on something else than their science, too). It's our hobby. Other people just have different ones.
Many packages got initially created because I needed them for my thesis, like svn-multi, tikz-timing and standalone. On the other hand if I would work ...
34
Briefly, LaTeX consists of several layers. (Those who were actually involved in LaTeX's development, please feel free to correct me.)
The lowest layer is the three hundred or so TeX primitives such as \hbox or \vskip.
On top of this, there is the LaTeX kernel. This is a set of macros such as \documentclass, \usepackage, or \begin. The source of the kernel ...
33
You could start with LaTeX2ε for class and package writers aka clsguide.
We already have some information regarding this on the site, for example:
Style/class tutorials
Is there a comprehensive and complete LaTeX reference?
You could learn much if you would read the commentes LaTeX2ε sources aka source2e. To understand it best, you could learn TeX or ...
33
Let the creators of TeX and LaTeX answer:
Donald Knuth wrote in the first chapter of his TeXbook:
English words like ‘technology’ stem
from a Greek root beginning with the
letters τεχ...; and this same Greek
word means art as well as
technology. Hence the name TeX, which
is an uppercase form of τεχ.
Insiders pronounce the χ of TeX as a
...
33
Packages are simply tex files with commands as you may define in your own document. Many packages are essentially options where it doesn't make sense to load both font packages: or packages for footnote styles and other layout choices etc.
If LaTeX was being designed now, it would probably have more code in the preloaded format, but in 1993 when LaTeX2e ...
32
In short TeX is all about formatting, for document/template designers, while LaTeX is all about content, for document writers.
TeX is a typesetting system. It provides many commands which allow you to specify the format of your document with great detail (e.g. font styles, spacing, kerning, ligatures, etc.), and has specialized algorithms to compute the ...
31
A dubious analogy?... guess we'll see
Imagine that you are baking a cake, and that somehow you could magically get software on a computer to do it for you.
LaTeX would...
measure the ingredients
mix them perfectly
create very little mess
write down all of its decisions for you to follow later
would only ever ask you for clarification if it was absolutely ...
31
A major motivation for the design of TeX originally and also of LaTeX is document stability, you should be able to get a 20 year old LaTeX document and still process it. To get absolute guaranteed stability you need to archive the whole system executables, fonts, etc, but for the vast majority of cases that is not necessary and an old LaTeX document will run ...
30
Based on this example on texample.net
I have created this diagram:
This infographic is an attempt to visualize the interaction of 'User level' and 'Software/file level' in LaTeX workflow.
Sources available here.
This is not exactly an answer. To give an idea of the files involved in the compilation, the node named ".tex file" should be elaborated further. ...
30
You probably had some customization in your thesis. Try to make a package of your code, publish it on CTAN and then support it, answering users' requests.
This will definitely help you to learn TeX and to procraste in your other activity.
At least this advice works for me.
29
Maybe another thing to mention is that thanks to new engines, like xetex and luatex, we now have access to many more fonts than before, and it is possible to use many features of the OT fonts. I am not sure what is the timeline, and how much of this was available five years ago, though. I only became aware of this relatively recently.
29
.fd = Font definition; used in generating the output
.bst = BiBTeX Style File (e.g., a certain journal's preferred Bibliography layout settings); used by BibTeX when generating the bibliography
.aux = LaTeX auxiliary file; created when LaTeX is run, these contain information LaTeX records which is then either used by BibTeX or LaTeX itself on later runs ...
28
I think the author having written a very nice book in LaTeX, is entitled to his views and has some valid points. I agree with some of them but disagree with most of them.
He has valid points on ease of use and the lack of a GUI. However, he misses the point that to incorporate the 100s if not thousands of commands available to a user via the basic TeX ...
28
No, TeX distributions don't cease to work.
Yes, LaTeX used to have a protection mechanism for suggesting users to update their LaTeX kernel. In the first years after the release of LaTeX2e, yearly updates were issued and there was a check whether the kernel is older than five years.
Such a check is performed only at format creation and it's sufficient to ...
27
I think it's a survival of the fittest thing.
First of all, math notation isn't specific to LaTeX, it's inherent in the TeX engine.
So what do we have:
Around (virtually unchanged) since the late 70s.
Text-based.
Terse.
Easy to read and write by humans.
Effective: Virtually every mathematical formula can be formulated.
Operational: There exists an engine ...
27
I would say that it's good that LaTeX doesn't preload a large set of packages. This, as explained by David Carlisle, is due to historic reasons based on the small computing power of 1990's machines, but has very useful consequences.
Let me present an example. Along with LaTeX2e, some packages were released as integral part of any LaTeX distribution, among ...
26
Mathematica can do this itself: ToExpression["\\frac{a}{b}", TeXForm].
The mathematica frontend will automatically perform the necessary doubling of the backslashes so long as you are pasting into a string (ie, put the cursor between quotes "" before pasting)
You didn't ask, but you can also go the other way mathematica->Tex: TeXForm[a/b] gives ...
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