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LaTeX Basics

by Henrison Hsieh

Here are the files that we made during the session:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/191qyl71yqnrwrm/AAC7hDHo4GoqZwZD4k6wJ90Ea?dl=0

(Some parts of this are based on notes from Brian Buccola, which can be found here: https://github.com/brianbuccola/latex-tutorials)

Why LaTeX?

http://www.andy-roberts.net/writing/latex/benefits

Free + Open Source

Uses very portable (and typically stable) file formats (text and PDF)

Very extensible (lots of packages to do many different things)

Why not LaTeX?

Learning curve

Some things that you’re used to might be a little less intuitive to do in LaTeX

But this is one thing this tutorial series will try to address!

What is LaTeX?

A markup language (like HTML) used for typesetting documents

Use text to specify formatting and other similar information

In Word, one way to make a word boldface is to highlight it and click the [B] button

In a Markup language, you do this with plain text!

In HTML, you would do this: <b>word</b>

In LaTeX you would do this: \textbf{word}

The file you type up isn’t the final product; you run it through another program to get the result

For HTML: Web Browser

For LaTeX: some LaTeX interpreter

LaTeX Setups

Several options: See https://www.latex-project.org/ for some

Plain Text Editor + Typesetting on the command line

e.g. Notepad or Textedit

Not really recommended, but you can if you really really wanted to!

Dedicated LaTeX editors:

e.g. TeXShop, Texpad, etc.

Usually at least one will come with your distribution

Usually has shortcuts/autocomplete for commonly typed text strings

Syntax highlighting

Handles typesetting for you

(Fancier) Text editor + LaTeX package:

e.g. Sublime Text, Atom, vim, etc.

You might have a favorite text editor already

There is likely a package or extension you can download to get much of the functionality of a LaTeX editor

Online:

e.g. Overleaf, ShareLaTeX, etc.

Can avoid having to install several GB of stuff

Usually have some features to facilitate collaboration

Downside: Might be a little less flexible

There are also a number of different flavors of (La)TeX! But you don’t have to worry about this for the most part.

LaTeX Document Structure

2 Major Parts

Preamble: Major formatting information, document-wide settings, packages, definitions (more on this last one next week)