Introduction to LaTeX

LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system; it includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation. LaTeX is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents. (Source: latex-project.org)

The introduction of LaTeX presentation covered the basic syntax for document preparation for formats suitable for technical documents, reports and presentations. I started by using a plain text file, gradually filling up with a bunch of LaTeX code which can be easily managed with a version control system.

The LaTeX code that will be used during the presentation will be made available.

Transcript

1. Developers Conference 2018
   Introduction to L
   A
   TEX
   Ish Sookun
   Linux System Administrator
   La Sentinelle Ltd
   LSL Digital (we develop & host digital products for La Sentinelle Ltd & subsidiaries)
   

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2. Outline
   What is L
   A
   TEX?
   How is it pronounced?
   A brief history of L
   A
   TEX
   Where is it used?
   Getting L
   A
   TEX
   Installation
   Configuring Visual Studio Code
   Structure of L
   A
   TEX documents
   documentclass, options, sections etc
   Demo
   Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
   ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
   a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 1 of 14 :)
   

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3. What is L
   A
   TEX?
   

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4. How is it pronounced?
   There is no specific recommendation on pronouncing L
   A
   TEX but the TEX part is
   pronounced tech as explained by its creator Prof. Donald E. Knuth. TEX in Greek
   means art, craft or technique.
   Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
   ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
   a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 2 of 14 :)
   

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5. A brief history of L
   A
   TEX
   The L
   A
   TEX program is a computer typesetting for placing text on a page. It was written
   by Dr. Leslie Lamport while using TEX’s typesetting engine & macro system developed
   by Prof. Donald E. Knuth.
   1962 - TEX created by Prof. Donald E. Knuth
   1968 - TEX and Metafont
   1982 - TEX82
   1983 - L
   A
   TEX2.09 created by Dr. Leslie Lamport
   1994 - L
   A
   TEX2ε
   L
   A
   TEX3 is under development since 2014.
   Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
   ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
   a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 3 of 14 :)
   

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6. Where is it used?
   Over the years L
   A
   TEX has become the standard document system for writing technical
   and scientific papers. It’s widely used by the scientific community to produce
   documents that contains formulas, for example the Schrodinger equation:
   eiˆ
   k.ˆ
   r =
   ∞
   l=0
   (2l + 1) il jl (kr) Pl (cos θ)
   L
   A
   TEX is also used by scholars to write documents that contain non-Latin scripts such
   as Arabic, Greek, Sanskrit, Tamil, etc.
   Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
   ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
   a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 4 of 14 :)
   

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7. Getting L
   A
   TEX
   

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8. Installation
   I use Texmaker on openSUSE Tumbleweed and installation is straighforward via the
   command-line console:
   sudo zypper in texmaker
   Installation packages are available for Linux distributions, Windows and macOS from
   the project website xm1math.net/texmaker.
   Texmaker is a cross-platform open source L
   A
   TEX editor with an integrated PDF viewer.
   It’s written in C++ and uses the Qt interface.
   Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
   ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
   a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 5 of 14 :)
   

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9. Configuring Visual Studio Code
   A L
   A
   TEX extension by James Yu is available through the Visual Studio Marketplace.
   Press Ctrl + P, paste the following command and press enter.
   ext install James-Yu.latex-workshop
   The default config will use the pdflatex engine but it can be easily configured to use
   xelatex, lualatex or some other engine.
   Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
   ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
   a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 6 of 14 :)
   

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10. Structure of L
    A
    TEX documents
    

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11. Example code
    % Simple LaTeX document
    \documentclass[11pt]{article}
    \title{A Simple {\LaTeX} Document}
    \author{Ish Sookun\\ La Sentinelle Ltd}
    \date{\today}
    \begin{document}
    \begin{abstract}
    This is an abstract.
    \end{abstract}
    Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
    ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
    a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 7 of 14 :)
    

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12. \documentclass
    Define the document type using the
    documentclass command. Possible
    classes are:
    • article
    • report
    • book
    • beamer
    The documentclass calls a document
    template that determines document
    characteristics such as headers, margins,
    and so on.
    Example usage:
    \documentclass[11pt]{article}
    Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
    ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
    a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 8 of 14 :)
    

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13. \begin{document}
    Everything that makes up your document
    should reside within the document
    environment.
    \begin{document}
    ...
    \end{document}
    Within the document block you can
    now add an abstract and sections
    containing paragraphs.
    \section{Introduction}
    All our digital products
    are deployed on Amazon
    Web Services.\\
    Expenses incurred by
    running instances...
    Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
    ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
    a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 9 of 14 :)
    

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14. \maketitle
    To display a title you need to declare the
    following components in the preamble:
    • title
    • author
    • date
    You can accomplish the whole with the
    following commands:
    \title{Cloud Expenses Report}
    \author{Ish Sookun}
    \date{\today}
    ...
    \maketitle
    These commands should be in the
    preamble, except the maketitle
    command which comes after the
    \begin{document}.
    Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
    ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
    a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 10 of 14 :)
    

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15. \begin{abstract}
    A block of text can be formatted by
    declaring an environment called
    abstract. Environments are delimited by
    an opening \begin and a closing \end
    tag in the form:
    \begin{abstract}
    This report was prepared after
    analyzing the expenses incurred
    over a period of twelve months
    starting January 2017.
    \end{abstract}
    An abstract is optional and I would
    recommend it only if you are writing a
    report that is several pages long.
    Otherwise, you may also have a section
    that is called abstract in your report.
    Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
    ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
    a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 11 of 14 :)
    

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16. Woohoo! It’s demo time :)
    

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17. openSUSE Leap 15 - release is coming! 25 May 2018 :)
    Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
    ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
    a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 13 of 14 :)
    

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18. Further Reading
    The TEXbook
    by Donald E. Knuth
    L
    A
    TEX - A Document Preparation System by Dr. Leslie Lamport
    by Dr. Leslie Lamport
    I used the Metropolis beamer theme by Matthias Vogelgesang for this presentation. Its source
    can be obtained at github.com/matze/mtheme.
    Developers Conference 2018 — Introduction to L
    ATEX — Ish Sookun — Voil`
    a Hotel 19 May 2018 We’re on slide 14 of 14 :)
    

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