[LUGSB] How many of you know LaTeX?

[Justin Seyster]

The learning curve can be steep.  It is fun though, and your results
will look a lot nicer than anybody else's in the class.  Basically,
LaTeX is easy to use until you hit one of the things it just doesn't
want to do.  Then you have to either accept that you won't get exactly
the output you want or tear you hear out for hours trying to figure out
what magic incantation will soothe the great LaTeX deities.

Here's a homework I submitted a while ago as a template.  It defines
this cool "question" command!  I'm not sure where it came from (most
likely it came from Professor Stark, who taught this particular class).

I recommend Inkscape for including figures and diagrams.  (It's Free
Software and available for all major platforms.)  First save your figure
in Inkscape's native SVG format and then save a copy as EPS (if you are
using the latex command) or PDF (if you are using the pdflatex command).
Then you can insert the figure with:

\begin{figure}
  \center
  \includegraphics[width=0.9\textwidth]{filename}
  \caption{An impressive figure demonstrating my extensive knowledge.}
\end{figure}

Don't include the .eps or .pdf extension in the filename, LaTeX will
infer the correct extension.  Also, you can change the 0.9 value to
whatever size you want (as a fraction of the width of the text column).

Finally, make sure to use lots of pompous wording, as in my example, so
as to intimidate graders.
        --Justin

On Thu, 2011-04-07 at 15:27 -0400, Ehtesh Choudhury wrote:
> Just wondering about the learning curve. I can do simple expressions
> and stuff, but... I'm wondering if I should be using it for future
> homeworks. It's more appropriate than handwriting, I think. But I was
> wondering how certain things would be displayed... like diagrams? Do
> you just include them as a reference to a file?
> 
> Or maybe there's some nice simple homework outputting method that
> involves minimal LaTeX, meaning, no worrying about uh... templates and
> where things go (for the most part).
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