Latex A document preparation system

1. LatexA document preparation system All academic staff in Computer Science publish their work using Latex – NOT Microsoft Word. Why? Note to self – press ctrl key to show pointer

2. Outline • What is latex and why learn it. • How does it compare to word processors. • The basic method of producing documents • Some basic commands • Where to go for more information…Google

3. Have you ever….? • Saved a word file at university • Then taken it home and opened it on a different computer, only to find all of the formatting is different. • Latex is platform independent. You can give a tex file to someone to run on any computer. • Latex is for scientific/technical documents.

4. What is latex • It is a document preparation package • Compare with notepad (a text editor), Microsoft word (a word processor) and e.g. eclipse (a programming environment). • It is a mark up language (like html) • In Internet Explorer go to View Source and you can see the code for a webpage. • http://scottmcpeak.com/latex/whatislatex.html

5. Why learn latex • Latex is harder to learn that Microsoft word - initially. • In the longer term you will see the benefits. • It will be around for years (and has been). • It produces more professional results compared to WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) type word processing packages. • There is a strong community of users on the internet (user groups, forums e.g. http://latex-community.org/). • Publishing is often encouraged in latex (rather than MS word). • Lots of good tutorials on-line

6. Comparison Word vs Latex • MS word is a single file e.g. CV.doc. • Wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) • Latex uses (at least) two files, a source file (input) and a target file (output). E.gCV.tex and CV.pdf • In Word, you highlight text with a mouse and make it bold/underlined/change font size… • In Latex, you surround the text with a command e.g\emph{John} emphasizes the word “John” • http://openwetware.org/wiki/Word_vs._LaTeX

7. Command line or Icons • It can be run from the command line. • Basic commands are • latex file.tex • bibtexfile.tex • pdflatexfile.tex • It can also be run via software (e.g. http://www.winedt.com/), many of which are freely available.

8. Special Characters • Most characters on the keyboard, have their usual meaning “abc123”. • However the characters \ { } $ ^ _ % ~ # & are used for special purposes • \# \$ \% \& \_ \{ \} •  \, ^ and ~ cannot be produced simply by preceding them with a backslash. They can however be produced using \char92 (in the \texttt font only), \char94 and \char126 respectively. 

9. Comments % • You can skip or ignore a line by placing % in front % this line is not printed This line will be printed • Unfortunately there is no way to comment multiple lines except by doing it individually. % line 1 is ignored % line 2 is ignored • However many graphical editors do allow this.

10. control sequences. • consist of a backslash \ followed by a string of (upper or lower case) letters. • \delta produces the greek letter , • \emph{hi},emphasized (italic font), hi • \to (or \rightarrow) produces the arrow  -->.

11. mathematics mode • The special character $ is used when embedding mathematical expressions in paragraphs of ordinary text in order to change into and out of `mathematics mode'. • The special characters ^ and _ are used in mathematical expressions to produce superscripts and subscripts respectively. • \begin{equation} f(x) = 4x + 11 \end{equation} • A backslash \ can be obtained in mathematics mode by typing \backslash.

12. Greek letters and math symbols Just Google “Greek letters latex” or “latex math symbols”. Here are a few I have found. • http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/MathSymb.html • http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/GreekLetters.html

13. Work through the following (eg. 2) • \documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article} • \begin{document} • \emph{analysis} • $D$ • $\bf R$ • $f \colon D \to \mathbf{R}$ • $\epsilon > 0$ • $x \in D$, • $\delta > 0$ • \end{document}

14. Producing White Space in LaTeX • “white space” is ignored by latex. • \hspace{20 mm}. Horizontal space of 20 mm • \vspace{10 mm}. Vertical space of 10 mm • \noindentWill not indent the next paragraph. • Mr.\ Smith' • ~represents a blank space at which LaTeX is not allowed to break between lines • To obtain `W. R. Hamilton' it is best to type W.~R.~Hamilton.

15. List environments LaTeX provides the following list environments: • enumerate for numbered lists, • \begin{enumerate} … \end{enumerate} • itemize for un-numbered lists, • \begin{itemize} ... \end{itemize} • description for description lists • \begin{description}…\end{description}

16. Tables • \begin{tabular} command • the string {lll} is a format specification for a table with three columns of left-justified text. • \begin{tabular}{|r|r|} two columns of right-justified • the ampersand character & is used to separate columns of text within each row, • the double backslash \\ is used to separate the rows of the table. • the command \hline produces a horizontal line

17. Accents • There are a variety of control sequences for producing accents. For example, the control sequence \'{o} produces an acute accent on the letter o. Thus typing • Se\'{a}n \'{O} Cinn\'{e}ide. • Again, to find more – I encourage you to just Google “latex accents”

18. Define Your own commands. • \[ \int_{-\infty}^{+\infty} f(x)\,dx.\] • \newcommand{\inftyint}{\int_{-\infty}^{+\infty}} • \[ \inftyint f(x)\,dx.\] • \newcommand{\intwrtx}[1]{\int_{\infty}^{+\infty} #1 \,dx} • \[ \intwrtx{f(x)}.\] • \newcommand{\intwrt}[2]{\int_{-\infty}^{+\infty} #2 \,d #1} • \[ \intwrt{y}{f(y)}.\]

19. Theorems, proofs, lemmas, … •  \begin{theorem} … \end{theorem}.  • \begin{lemma} ... \end{lemma} • \begin{proof}….\qed \end{proof} •  \label{name}  •  \ref{name}

20. Fractions and Roots • To print a fraction we type • \frac{numerator}{denominator}. • To print a square root • \sqrt{expression}. • To print the n-th root • \sqrt[n]{expression}.

21. Brackets and Norms • (, [ and {, which are obtained by typing (, [ and \{ respectively.  • The corresponding right delimiters are of course obtained by typing ), ] and \}. •  In addition | and || are used as both left and right delimiters, and are obtained by typing | and \| respectively. • large parentheses is to type \left( for the left parenthesis and \right) for the right parenthesis,

22. Matrices. • Matrices are important for a number of application in engineering. • You will probably use Matlab to do the calculations • But you can use Latex to produce the documentation • http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/Matrices.html

23. What to do if you get an error. • PC for John Woodward • you should compile the tex file every few minutes so you can see immediately if you have made a mistake. • Unfortunately, the error is not always where you think it is. Some detective work may be necessary. • Pay attention to the error messages.

24. Bibtex 1 To cite a work or paper \cite{Narendra_1990} The following two commands go at the end of the docuement To choose a style \bibliographystyle{plain} Put your references in a separate file myref.bib\bibliography{myrefs} "myrefs.bib" \end{document} See http://amath.colorado.edu/documentation/LaTeX/reference/faq/bibstyles.html

25. Bibtex 2 • You need to compile the bibtex file. • Suppose you have article.tex and article.bib. You need to run: • latex article.tex (this will generate a document with question marks in place of unknown references) • bibtex article (this will parse all the .bib files that were included in the article and generate meta information regarding references) • latex article.tex (this will generate document with all the references in the correct places) • latex article.tex (just in case if adding references broke page numbering somewhere) • Or you could write a script with these commands (see Cygwin lecture)

26. Document classes You have been article style today but there are other styles • book, • report • letter • http://www.latextemplates.com/

27. Where to find out more • Just Google latex with different combinations (see the earlier lecture on Google). • http://www.latexeditor.org/ • www.winedt.com/  • miktex.org/

28. weblinks • http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/ • http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf • http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Introduction • http://www.miktex.org/ • http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=verbfile • http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/

29. NASA and Love letters • NASA uses latex • http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/latex/ltx-2.html • Next time you write a love letter to your girl/boy friend – Don’t handwrite it – don’t use word – use latex 