Source files, links, and references for the 2017 Winter Quarter Introductory Latex Workshop.
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Latex is a markup language, like HTML, that gives you a way to type up mathematical documents that looks clean and professional.
It is widely used in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines to produce documents that include mathematical notation, like publications, theses, and books.
However, it can also be used type up homework assignments or produce organized lecture notes. It allows you to easily save and edit your "source code", which you can then easily use to generate PDFs or even web pages.
Latex is also widely used across academia, so this is a particularly good tool to know for those who are considering graduate school. However, it is also gaining popularity elsewhere - for example, it's possible to use Latex to produce resumes, reports, or presentations.
This workshop will cover how to set up a Latex environment, how to produce most of the mathematical symbols seen in undergraduate courses, and how generate a completed PDF document.
Please bring a laptop to follow along!
- Why choose Latex
- Demos of actual LaTeX docs
- Compiling a minimal document
- What is an environment?
- Titles and sections
- The Preamble
- Sections and subsections
- Document Classes
- Math Examples
- Inline, equation, align environments
- How to use packages
- Make sure that you have an account on ShareLatex.com
- Go to your Projects page, create a New Project and select Blank Project
- Get ready to follow along!
If you get stuck at any point, you can refer to the fully completed documents below.
If you're interested in learning more, there are also a number of ShareLatex projects that go deeper into the topics we covered available in the References section below. The source is also available in this repository, if you want to try downloading and compiling yourself.
All of the tools we discussed are also linked at the bottom.
- Minimal documents, writing theorems/proofs, structuring your document, advanced environments and more:
- Document Samples:
- General Purpose
- TexZilla: A REPL for Math expressions
- Detexify: Find commands for unknown symbols.
- Equation Editor GUI for generating code for more complicated expressions
- Table Generator: GUI for designing tables that generates copy-pastable source code
- CTAN: Hosts Latex packages, descriptions, and downloads.
- For installing/using Latex on your local machine: