Intermediate LaTeX - 17 Mar 2010
You will need to register at the SciPS page in order to participate.
This page contains further information about the course.
Before the course
This will be a practical session in a computer room, on IT Services Windows PCs. For the purposes of the workshop, we will be using MiKTeX Portable. This can be downloaded from the MiKTeX page or copied from T:\LaTeX, either to a USB drive or to your N: drive. Once you have it on your USB drive or the N: drive, double-click on miktex-portable.bat (or .cmd), and then the tiny MiKTeX icon should appear in the bottom-right of the screen. Right-click, then launch TeXworks. (NB: you may need to rename miktex-portable.cmd to miktex-portable.bat.)
Tips:
- Simply open the file, then "Typset" (Ctrl-T), or the green "play" button, or in the Typeset menu. Dead easy.
- It will (probably) complain about missing packages. Simply comply with its demands and be patient.
- If it fails for some reason, try: (1) closing the PDF preview, (2) removing the aux files (File menu), (3) Quitting and relaunching, (4) Properly quitting (right-click on the MiKTeX icon) and relaunching, (5) Ctrl-alt-delete, Task List, randomly kill things..
- Format -> Syntax Coloring -> LaTeX
Alternatively, you could launch an X-session on a remote (probably Linux) machine by launching Exceed (Start -> All Programs -> Applications -> Hummingbird Connectivity 2006 -> Exceed) and then logging in to a remote maching using PuTTy (Start -> All Programs -> Utilities -> PuTTy). You can then use LaTeX as you normally would (e.g., using Emacs).
The course will not cover the basics of LaTeX; I'll assume everyone is at least vaguely competent. If you need to brush up on the basics, first download my basic LaTeX document, make sure that works on your system, and then try the resources.
Course documents
latexcourse.pdf - the course sheet. LaTeX source file is latexcourse.tex
latex.ppt - Powerpoint slides for the course (latex.pdf in PDF)
basics.tex - enough to get you started
University of Sussex LaTeX thesis template (you'll need to download this for the course)
images.zip - ZIP file containing images for figures exercise (cmb.jpg plot.pdf scalarfield.png)
table.txt - some data for making a table
Resources
Books
There's something to be said for having a good book in front of you, rather than relying on Google and loads of out-of-date and badly written online resources.
- Kopka & Daly's "A Guide to LaTeX" is the book I normally use. The university library has several copies of the Third Edition (1999), although there is a Fourth Edition (2004). (LaTeX hasn't changed a huge amount since 1999.) There are some sample pages from the Third Edition at amazon.com.
Online
- LaTeX documentation. The LaTeX installation has its own documentation. It's worth finding this. On some systems, you may get it by typing "texdoc graphics" at the command line for help on the graphics package, for example. I'm using a Mac, and I found the HTML documentation at file:///sw/share/texmf-dist/doc/index.html.
- CTAN is possibly the most authorative source of documentation online.
- LaTeX page at Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge. Plenty of links at the bottom of the page, including many tutorials for beginners.
GUI Editors (free)
- MiKTeX (Windows)
- TeXworks (Unix, Windows, Mac)
- TeXnicCenter (Windows)
- TeXShop (Mac)
- Texmaker (Unix, Windows, Mac)
BibTeX
- Sources of data:
- Amatex - creates BibTeX entry for anything on Amazon (Stichwort = keyword, presumably, and select UK)
- CiteSeer - Computer and information science
- NASA Astrophysics Data System
- SPIRES High-energy physics
- ScienceDirect - export as RIS, then import to JabRef (below) (ScienceDirect on BibTeX)
- Bibliography Styles Database - 1000s of bst and sty files
- JabRef - BibTeX manager - can import from other formats (e.g., RIS). Click "BibTeX source" tab to view BibTeX entry.
- Wikipedia entry