Just don't try anything that isn't in your typical math paper. There are thousands of LaTeX packages, because they are all broken if you use them in a slightly unexpected way, so (reminiscent of JavaScript) a new package is created to "fix" it.<p>Tables? Here you go. Oh, you wanted nested tables? For that you need to switch to an entirely different package. Oh, and that one doesn't support splitting up tables over multiple pages. Maybe this new one can do it. But it doesn't support that other package you use. Maybe try that one instead. Oh, in that one you can't have ...<p>Or is that just me?
Most materials about LaTeX I tend to find on the web seem to be of the 'programming by StackOverflow' variety, i.e. 'copy this snippet of code, tweak it to your needs and compile'; they don't teach you about what the code actually does, how it interacts with everything else, and there is no syntax specification apart from series of digressions like 'oh, by the way, if you wish to achieve effect X, you can use option Y'. Unfortunately, even official documentation for LaTeX packages is often written that way (a major pleasant exception is the documentation for TikZ). In the short term, it may seem fine, but it inevitably comes back to bite the user later. The guide submitted here doesn't seem particularly different.<p>For those wishing to learn some 'theoretical' TeX, I can recommend <i>TeX by Topic</i>.[0] It mentions LaTeX macros only in passing, but even that amount was quite helpful to me.<p>[0] <a href="https://bitbucket.org/VictorEijkhout/tex-by-topic" rel="nofollow">https://bitbucket.org/VictorEijkhout/tex-by-topic</a>
The usual plug for sharelatex here. Check out sharelatex.com, it is amazing. Write LaTeX without having to install it, plus collaboration in the cloud. (I'm not affiliated, just a fan).<p>And in general, LaTeX is a super worthwhile language to learn. It may be a bit more complicated than markdown or its cousins, but it can do pretty much everything.<p>I've barely scratched the surface of what it can do, but since I live at the intersection of CS and Education research, it is great how BibTeX will swap between APA and ACM styles easily, or how I can use a macro to create likert scale questions, for example. It probably takes the right kind of mindset, but I really liked the fact that my dissertation had a makefile (and was in source control, way back in the CVS days).
Spoiler alert: you will not master LaTeX (nor anything) in minutes. I have written my master thesis on sharelatex.com, the first months have been painful but at the end I had a great feeling of having achieved something. I still not consider that I master LaTeX but at least I can now use it for any standard documents and draw graphs and math formulas with ease.<p>I really suggest developers to use LaTeX to create their resume because it looks really professional and personal (if you do not just use a standard template). It takes some time but you will get exactly what you want and learn many things along the way.
It lacks the most important LaTeX tip, don't fight the machine. LaTeX is really good at getting documents that look 90% as good as an actual typesetter could make them look, if one can live with somewhat conservative looking documents. The last 10 percent, fixing margin width, changing paragraphs and so on, are incredibly hard with LaTeX. (Of course LaTeX defaults are a lot better than word, largely because LaTeX automatically uses consistent headers instead of sometime 15 pt and sometimes 16 pt underlined.)
I used LaTeX a lot in university, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Even a minimal (and good looking) document requires a lot of (La)TeX knowledge.<p>You can of course use one of many existing templates, but you will quickly feel lost when you have to customize things.<p>These days, just go with Markdown (or the like) and just include assets (say graphs) as SVG and be done with it.<p>For scientific papers (especially with two columns layout) you probably have to go with LaTeX though.<p>Edit: By the way, my take at minimal LaTeX templates: <a href="https://github.com/renke/latex-templates" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/renke/latex-templates</a>
Overleaf.com is really nice too, if you work with others (e.g. on academic papers). The most painless papers I've ever written were with other competent people using LaTeX and overleaf. ShareLatex is good too, I'm not sure if you can autosubmit to journals and preprint servers with it though. That last feature is terrific for academics -- it's how publishing should work, but usually doesn't.<p>I spent the same amount of time (72 hours) getting one hairy equation laid out in Word that I spent compiling my entire dissertation in LaTeX. Naturally the former was a request from my adviser, who did the latter back when she was a student. Dammit.<p>If you have any serious math in your writing, nothing else comes close. (Protip: Mathematica, the only non-free software package that ever earned its keep for me, will directly export equation cells as LaTeX if you ask nicely. I can't stand doing tedious symbolic manipulation without it.)
I've written my first LaTeX documents with LyX [1], a wonderful application, if you're just getting started.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.lyx.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lyx.org/</a>
From various tutorials I feel my knowledge of latex is very top down, and not very deep. I just recently realized that {} are not needed for singletons, so I may for instance write \frac12 for 1/2.<p>Can anybody recommend a more bottom up guide? Something more similar to learning a programming language, where you start with the basic syntax and build on features iteratively?<p>Is Knuth's book the best way to go? Or is that like learning C, when you wanted to learn C++?
For any poor soul that has to write LaTeX for whatever reason but doesn't want to bother installing anything, I cannot recommend <a href="https://www.sharelatex.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.sharelatex.com/</a> enough.
This is a good beginner doc.<p>I'd never used LaTeX until about a year ago when I needed it to write a paper. The first thing I wondered was how to install it. Surely in 2015 installation would be a snap. It'd be in the App Store. Or Homebrew.<p><i>Do not install LaTeX.</i> Use it in the cloud. I use www.overleaf.com which is awesome. Similarly, I use www.draw.io to create PDFs for my drawings.<p><pre><code> \usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage[hang,font=bf]{caption}
\usepackage{natbib}
\usepackage[unicode=true]{hyperref}
\usepackage[noabbrev,capitalise,nameinlink]{cleveref}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage{minted}
\usepackage{inconsolata}
\usemintedstyle{bw}
\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{siunitx}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{fixltx2e}
</code></pre>
The one thing I'd add to this tutorial is citations and bibliographies.
"Brief Intro to Latex for programmers/developers" vs "Master LATEX in minutes", quite a difference!
But looks nevertheless like a good introduction to LaTeX. Just why the all the emoji...
Tip for people who want to compile LaTeX from the command line: latexmk is basically a build tool for latex, which can also do things like incremental compilation and listen for changes. It's part of MacTex and can also be installed with the package manager of your choice if you use texlive.<p>Another tip: If you usually write markdown, pandoc can turn Markdown interspersed with LaTeX code into pdfs.
I personally really like using latex. But the main problem for me is that latex is not really designed for collaborative editing, especially with people who don't know latex. are there any track changes feature plugin/app that's available and relatively simple for people who mainly use MS word.
The author mentioned ShareLaTeX but not the other popular cloud service overleaf.<p>I actually would have done the same given my experience with both. Recently I tried out overleaf in order to allow others to collaborate on a paper. However, what was compiling perfectly fine on my local machine just refused to compile on overleaf, keep throwing me error related to $ symbol even though I did not use $ symbol at all (I used my own bst and cls). After googling for 30 minutes without finding a fix, I gave up and turned to the alternative, ShareLaTeX. It compiled perfectly with no errors on the first try.
LaTeX is much deeper than this "mastery" document conveys. Although, LaTeX is significantly easier to pick up if you learn to program first. I appreciate the author sharing this here though :)
Stupid question: Outside of the maths heavy documents, could markdown or restructuredtext be a substitute to Latex nowadays? It is a lot easier to learn and use.
Sometimes I wonder: why can't LaTeX be just as simple as HTML, or perhaps even simpler? Except perhaps for pagination and available default fonts, HTML practically fulfills all my formatting needs. (Note: HTML includes MathML, a mathematical formula markup language). And for automatically numbering tables and figures, one can easily write a script that is completely independent from the underlying formatting language.
While I applaud the effort, this sort of thing suffers from the same problem any "quick introduction" to something rich and complex has: it's easy to see the complexity and discern the unfamiliarity, but requires effort to discern the value. No one has ever been convinced of the value of TeX/LaTeX, Vim, Emacs, Awk, Lex, Lisp, etc. by a fifteen minute intro. They're convinced by pushing themselves (or being forced) to use the tool for a substantial period of time (usually weeks) over several significant projects until they discovered the familiarity, power and utility that it affords people who are sufficiently familiar with the tool. In a machine shop, a lathe isn't an obvious choice for a project until you already know how to use a lathe.
Just wondering if people here use ConTeXt [0] as well?<p>I've personally found it somewhat easier to manage floats in ConTeXt as compared to TeX/PDFTex.<p>[0] <a href="http://wiki.contextgarden.net/What_is_ConTeXt" rel="nofollow">http://wiki.contextgarden.net/What_is_ConTeXt</a>
A better title would be "How to produce a simple LaTeX document in minutes". Or perhaps even "Another brief LaTeX tutorial".<p>When I first began to use LaTeX long ago, a friend of mine gave me a preamble and essentially told me to not touch it until I knew better. This was very helpful to me, and I immediately began to use LaTeX in a mindset that separated content from presentation. Later, I did know better, but I'd already gotten the gist of what's going on.<p>Years later, when I introduce LaTeX to others (which I have frequently done), I follow the same starting path.
Surprised no one mentioned TeXworks[0] as an alternative for easy installation.<p>0.<a href="https://www.tug.org/texworks/" rel="nofollow">https://www.tug.org/texworks/</a>
I used Latex extensively in Univ for thesis and publishing papers. Since then, I forgot that knowledge and am having hard time picking it up.<p>However, I briefly used www.sharelatex.com, is a web GUI (or WYSIWYG) type approach to Latex. It's a good project and makes using Latex slightly easier, but user must still know various packages, how to layout images etc. Nonetheless, sharelatex is a good effort and hope it benefits others.
I just use TeX, never LaTeX. With TeX, the documentation is shorter and, IMHO, better written. That is, get to concentrate on just Knuth's <i>The TeXBook</i> -- nicely done technical writing.<p>With LaTeX, I suspect that really should also know the underlying TeX, but with some understanding of TeX can do just fine without LaTeX and all its extra considerations.
I am not really into LaTeX but i write all my letters with it and like doing so very much. I get nice looking clean documents that have a very professional appeal and are much more convenient to create than in any full fledged editor.<p>I just use templates and fill in the blanks. I once showed my not so computer affine sister how to do it and she likes it too.
An important correction: don't use TexMaker, it's no longer actively developed. Use TexStudio (<a href="http://www.texstudio.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.texstudio.org/</a>), the fork/continuation of that project. Much more polished, performant, and many more convenient features.
Has anyone tried the Lout typesetting program? I worked with it several years ago and was very impressed. Mark Summerfield uses it for his programming books:<p><a href="https://www.qtrac.eu/lout.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.qtrac.eu/lout.html</a>
For those of you who like latex output but find learning it daunting, give emacs org mode a try, as it can export to latex easily, and you can always break into actual latex inside org if you are doing something more complicated.
If you are looking for a more coherent and better source, Wikibooks has an amazing Latex guide:<p><a href="https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX</a>