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So, I'm pretty new to LaTeX. I've been told in many places to use KOMA-Script document-classes instead of the standard ones; but it's also been mentioned that after doing so, you can't use a plethora of the standard functions of LaTeX safely once you do so, and you should use the ‘KOMA way’ of doing things instead?

Does anybody know of a good beginner-tutorial that has integrated KOMA-Script documentation; instead of me reading a normal LaTeX tutorial and then searching for each and every little thing in the KOMA manual to try and see if there's an alternative / better / more modern way to do it?

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  • In this topic, it is written : "KOMA-Script offers an extensive great German documentation with many deep insights, also about typography, while a weakness is still the English translation, which doesn't cover the most recent additions yet." Do you read German? If so, have a look at this complete documentation. If not, I don't know! – Clément Jan 28 '16 at 5:07
  • I don't know of any such guide. If you read through the KOMA documentation you will get a good sense of the things it does, though. Very roughly though, anything to do with main document layout such as page layout, section headings, headers and footers, tables of contents are handled by KOMA. Most other stuff isn't. Although there are lots of KOMA fans out there, there are many of us who aren't. – Alan Munn Jan 28 '16 at 5:07
  • Another related question that is close to yours: Most useful additions in KOMA-Script? – Alan Munn Jan 28 '16 at 5:09
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    Yah, I'm doing some digging in the manual; but most of my problem is that I don't have a good grasp on what to look for in there yet; so any given LaTeX operation I want to do, I have to check: 1. TeX.SE, to make sure it's not out-of-date; 2. KOMA, to see if it's Done Differently 'Round Here, and finally 3. Google to see usages, if neither is the case. It's laborious, to say the least. /= – ELLIOTTCABLE Jan 28 '16 at 18:57
  • KOMA defines some extra options and useful commands so it is easier to use (if you read the documentation) but much harder to customize in places where the author did not expect customization. – Johannes_B Jan 29 '16 at 9:31
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So, I'm pretty new to LaTeX. I've been told in many places to use KOMA-Script document-classes instead of the standard ones; but it's also been mentioned that after doing so, you can't use a plethora of the standard functions of LaTeX safely once you do so, and you should use the ‘KOMA way’ of doing things instead?

I have no idea which command of LaTeX fails because of KOMA-script.

Furthermore, I can't think of a package that fails completely under a KOMA-script class.

But there are rare cases were KOMA-script and a package may cause an error. For example, if you load scrlayer-scrpage and titlesec you have to decide which \newpagestyle.

So read the KOMA-script manual and proceed as described there. If you need an additional package, load it and you would be very unlucky if you as a beginner stumbled upon one of the rare cases of incompatiblity.

I've been using KOMA-script for a decade in my daily work. I doubt I even encountered five issues. I remember two (scrpage2 / titlesec and scrjura / varioref).

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