[LUGSB] How many of you know LaTeX?

Fri Apr 8 15:49:46 EDT 2011

I talked about tikz/pgf... uh... a bit over a year ago at LUGSB.

This was the outputted pdf I used to illustrate some things you can do with it:
http://www.mediafire.com/?u3znmzdngmt

On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Ehtesh Choudhury
<merlockmagus at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't mind compiling it -- I just figured something like a REPL would
> benefit it. I really like interactive programming -- so it'd be nice to see
> something similar all over the place.
>
> Tikz you say... that sounds like it would be immensely useful.
>
> On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 9:55 AM, Jan Kasiak <j.kasiak at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I've used it for my math homework (AMS 301/310 + CSE 350/CSE 373)
>> along with Tikz to draw out graphs and state diagrams. They're really
>> pretty :D but also time consuming.
>> You might also want to check out Gummi, which is a Latex Editor that
>> shows your code on one side of the screen, and compiles it live on the
>> other side.
>>
>> -Jan
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 3:59 AM, Justin Seyster <justin at seyster.org> wrote:
>> > I use LaTeX a lot for writing papers (I'm a grad student).  Truth be
>> > told, there aren't many other things I could use it for!  (Grad students are
>> > not often permitted out of the lab for other activities.)  On the rare
>> > occasion I need to send a printed letter, I usually type it up in LaTex.
>> >  There is a nice template for letters out of the box, actually.  I once
>> > typeset a short story with LaTeX.  It came out pretty slick.
>> >
>> > The best way to learn LaTeX is pretty much like any programming
>> > language.  Just get the basics (what you see in my homework example, more or
>> > less), and then Google around whenever you want to do something and you
>> > can't figure it out with what you've got.
>> >
>> > As for interactivity, I guess that's just not the way Knuth and the
>> > other hacker geeks who develop the system ever envisoined it.  There is a
>> > simplicity to it: you just edit in your favorite text editor and then run
>> > make (I have Makefiles for all my papers) to see how it came out.  It's also
>> > pretty decent for collaboration if you all your sources in version control.
>> >  You might be interested in trying LyX, which is a graphical editor for
>> > LaTeX.  It looks pretty good, but I've never tried it myself.
>> >
>> > If you have both PDF and EPS version of a figure, then LaTeX will choose
>> > the appropriate one.  If you run the latex command, then it uses the EPS
>> > version; if you run pdflatex, then it uses the PDF version.  That's why it's
>> > useful to omit the extension: it makes your sources compilable with both
>> > latex and pdflatex.
>> >
>> > Oh, I forgot one word of warning!  Be careful about using transparency
>> > or gradients in your Inkscape graphics.  If you do, Inkscape will rasterize
>> > them when you convert to EPS, which looks ugly.  I got bitten by this a few
>> > times.
>> >        --Justin
>> >
>> > From: lugsb-bounces at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu
>> > [mailto:lugsb-bounces at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu] On Behalf Of Ehtesh Choudhury
>> > Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 2:09 AM
>> > To: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook
>> > Subject: Re: [LUGSB] How many of you know LaTeX?
>> >
>> > Do you use it for other things now that you know it? It really ought to
>> > be taught, along with REPL testing and editor/IDE usage, in some lower level
>> > classes. Would be more valuable to a CS student than UML, I think.
>> >
>> > Haha, what happens in the case you have both a .eps and a .pdf  with the
>> > same 'filename'?
>> >
>> > Also, when did you start picking it up? Why isn't it more... interactive
>> > -- less compiling, more generating on the fly? Although I guess some
>> > variants of LaTeX must do that by now?
>> > On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 4:23 PM, Justin Seyster <justin at seyster.org>
>> > wrote:
>> > 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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