Welcome to the 3-day Workshop on <<Prepare Scholarly Articles Using LATEX>>

1. Welcome to the 3-day Workshop on<<Prepare Scholarly Articles Using LATEX>> Presented by Saeid Abolfazli (Abolfazli.s@gmail.com) Faculty of Computer Science and IT University Malaya 23,24, and 25 April 2013

2. Workshop Outline • Day 1 • Introduction to LaTeX • Installing LaTeX applications and tools • LaTeX Scripting and basics • Day 2 • Revising important topics and answer to questions • Reference Management for LaTeX • Equations, Symbols, Special Characters, Figures, and tables • Paper Templates • Converting your paper from word to LaTeX • UM Thesis Template • Day 3 • Magical Tools for LaTeX • Advance Topics in LaTeX • Tips and Tricks for easy LaTeXing • Troubleshooting • Q & A

3. Day 1 - Outline • Introduction to the Event • Introduction to LaTex • LaTex Benefits and Drawbacks • Installing LaTeX applications and tools • LaTeXScripting and basics • Home Practices

4. What is LaTeX (Pronounced Lay-tech) • In 1978, Donald Knuthaimed to create a typesetting system, called Tex (pronounced 'tech'). • Tex gave extremely fine-grained control of document layout. However, the vast flexibility meant it was complex. • By the mid-80s Leslie Lamportcreated a set of macros that abstracted away many of the complexities. This allowed a simpler approach for creating documents, where content and style were separate. This extension became LaTeX (pronounced 'lay-tech'). • LaTeX is essentially a markup language. • Content is written in plain text and can be annotated with various 'commands' that describe how certain elements should be displayed. • The LaTeX interpreter reads a LaTeX marked-up file, renders the content into a document, and dumps it in a new file.

5. Latex Benefits Benefits for the Publisher • LaTeXdefines "structured" files in which the various elements (title, authors, headings, etc.) are easily identified. This is crucial for the future, when we may need to migrate many long articles into new formats. Benefits for authors • free. • Fine-grain control • Cross-Platform Tech. • Cross-platform files • Very high quality output, especially for mathematical things. • Commonly used among scholars • Various free editors • Style is separated from the content. • Free style exist for many periodicals. • LaTeX is extensible.(add-ons or you can write yourself). • Package system • Very easy referencing • Auto Table of contents, List of Tables, List of Figures, page numbering and many more • Figures are correctly placed

6. LaTex Drawbacks to you! • Difficult to start!!! (Not anymore, I guess ) • Limitation in Reviewing and commenting • Most of the times, you will see un-styled text while word presents style with the text. • Yet, No ‘word suggestion’ like Microsoft Word. • It needs compiling • Error handling is not easy. • It is open source, so anything can be expected  • But still it is far better than Microsoft Word

7. What Can LaTex do? if you are writing a document with lots of maths, tables (multipage), cross-references, etc, and you need to format the document and bibliography to suit various publications, then LaTeX is clearly the best choice. You can prepare following text using latex: • Conference Paper • Journal Paper • Research Thesis • Research Report • Books and any other lengthy documents. Prepare Scholarly Articles Using LATEX - By Saeid Abolfazli, Hassan Keshavarz

8. Important Tips to avoid confusion while Learning LaTeX in this event • You can do things in many different ways, it depends on you. • I am choosing the way that is very easy to me & those who have learnt from me. • You are advised to follow the same tools and tricks, however you are free to choose any other way. • If you do so, we can help each other to solve problems. Prepare Scholarly Articles Using LATEX - By Saeid Abolfazli, Hassan Keshavarz

9. References • American Mathematics Society • Andrew Roberts Page, available at http://www.andy-roberts.net/writing/latex/benefits • http://www.texniccenter.org/about/about-latex