How To Use Latex

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How To Use Latex



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LaTeX, usually pronounced either as “Lay-tech” or “Lah-Tech” is a typesetting software used as a document preparation system, very often used by academicians, researchers, scientists, mathematicians, and other professionals. In contrast to the general word processing software like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and others which function on the principle of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), LaTeX functions as a plain text markup language, that leverages optimal typographical rules which later gets compiled into a PDF document. A plain text format is usually used to write the content and then further annotations with subsequent commands are used, to control the display of various elements. As a result, you get documents that bear a more professionally designed appearance and belong to a completely different class to the output from a word processor.
LaTeX provides you with numerous customization options that allow you to introduce diversity in the documents with precise control over the layout and formatting. Moreover, creating templates in LaTeX is simple enough, it does not require a much-advanced level of knowledge for LaTeX to use and configure. All these features allow, even, a novice LaTeX user to create beautiful documents and learn as they go.
This guide has been extensively curated to provide you with a hands-on introduction to LaTeX. No matter even if you have used word processors like MS- Word or Docx, LaTeX, being simple and easy enough, can be learned in no time.
Built on the assumption that the majority of the readers might not have any prior know-how of the LaTeX typesetting, this guide starts from the basics and then gradually delves into the advanced formatting. One feature at a time will be introduced as you progress through this guide.
Once you have completed this guide, you will be able to create a LaTeX document all by yourself. The introductory features will let you get versed with the basic features of the LaTeX typesetting, empowering you to typeset your research paper or dissertation easily. However, the advanced features will allow you to build fluency with LaTeX, therefore, boosting your productivity.
In the late 1960s, Donald Knuth, arguably one of the most prominent and well-respected scientists in the domain of Computer science, was deeply disappointed by the quality of his famous series “The Art of Programming”. In order to eradicate this misery in document typesetting, he started a project to create a new typesetting infrastructure, called TeX (Pronounced “TeK”). The purpose of the project was to develop a typesetting program that can accommodate the texts and mathematical formulae easily.
He observed that the existing digital typesetting system of that era was not matching appropriate typographical standards. A decade later, he froze the system and TeX was born. TeX gave the fine-grained control and huge flexibility over the document layout, as envisioned by Knuth.
However, the enormous amount of flexibility associated with the TeX made it complex, too. So, by the mid-1980s, Leslie Lamport introduced a higher language that used TeX as the base but made it a lot easier to use. Introduction of predefined document styles, sectioning, indexing, automatic cross-references, automatic numbering, and various other useful features, as integrated by Lamport, brought real ease in the usage of TeX. Because of its user-friendliness LaTeX is sometimes referred to as “Lamport-TeX” too.
TeX exists as a combination of a program (that performs the typesetting; tex-core) and a format( a set of macros that engines bring into use; plain-tex). However, TeX lends itself with the basic features only. TeX can help you in formatting your document in great detail using its various commands( e.g. kerning, spacing, ligatures, font styles, etc.). Additionally, it provides different algorithms tailored to compute the optimal flow of text in your document( e.g. where to insert page breaks, line breaks, etc.) Therefore, TeX is built over providing users with various algorithms and commands to specify the tiniest detail to maintain the quality standards of the document.
Whereas, LaTeX, being built on the TeX, is a set of macros basically employed for formatting the documents. The idea behind LaTeX is to simplify the formatting so that users stay more focused on the content rather than the format. LaTeX generally provides you with commands that preside over the structure and appearance of your document. (e.g. sections, emphasis, tables, indices, etc.).
Assume you want to insert a section in your document. Now if you are using TeX, the procedure is to select a larger font, choose a different font style and insert spacings before and after the section heading. Whereas, in LaTeX, you just need to insert a command as \section{____} and you will find your section in front of your document with the appropriate font style, size, and spacings.
Moreover, since LaTeX functions over the same stack as TeX, a beautifully curated document is obtained as output, whereas the input also remains well structured, easier to read and write both for humans and machines as well.
LaTeX is the best choice for creating any scientific and technical documents. Moreover, LaTeX provides easy typesetting of mathematical formulae. If you are a scholar or researcher, then LaTeX is the best tool that you can leverage to write down your thesis or research paper. Besides its top-notch technical features, it can help you produce extremely stable and high-quality output documents, built with the easy handling of the complex sections, no matter how large they are.
Apart from the fact that worldwide, most of the academic and non-academic journals strongly recommend or accept submissions in the LaTeX format, below are the 8 reasons why should you learn LaTeX :
Further remarkable features of LaTeX are its cross-referencing capabilities, automatic numbering, and generation of a table of contents, figures, indexes, glossaries, and bibliographies. Moreover, LaTeX provides multilingual benefits, through its language-specific features integrated with PostScript and PDF features.
While using LaTeX you can produce your output document in the format as per your choices. DVI (Device Independent) and PDF are the two formats that LaTeX supports natively, but using other software integrations, you can easily convert that to PostScript, PNG, JPEG, etc.
To bring the magic of LaTeX to your system, we will be using the platform of LaTeX distribution-TeX Live. TeX Live has the huge benefit of being OS friendly i.e. it stays compatible with Windows, Mac OSX, and other Unix-based operating systems. TeX live is well managed and brings frequent updates. Therefore, a very trusted platform for anybody who wants LaTeX.
To start with, visit the homepage of TeX Live - TeX Users Group (tug.org)
You should explore the homepage in detail to understand the depth of information available there.
The installation can be done in two ways. The first method requires an internet connection whereas the second starts with a download of a file, which can be then installed in offline mode easily.
Follow through the steps described below and you will find LaTeX running on your system within a few clicks:
2. Download the install-tl-zip . This will provide the installation suite in zip format.
3. Extract the files using any zip extractor. Personally, I prefer WinRar.\
4. After the extraction is complete, open the containing folder and double click the windows batch file install-tl.
6. Choose the folder where you want the installation to happen and keep the paper size to A4 (recommended), or you can choose any other as per your choice.
7. Click the Install button at the right bottom.
8. A pop-up window showing the installation progress will appear.
9. Click, Finish when the installation window shows the installation progress as complete.
After the installation you can go to your start menu to check if the suite contains a TeX Live 2021 comprising 6 programs:
If you are a Mac OS user, you can visit TeX Live. Download the installation file in the .zip provided. Once done with the extraction, double-click the setup file to install it.
For most Linux users, installation is quite easy. You can go to your systems package manager and search for TeX Live. For Ubuntu, you may use Synaptic, on SUSE systems use YaST, with Red Hat an RPM frontend, and on Debian systems use Aptitude.
Pro Tip : For easy and smooth installation, you can choose to use the MikTeX bundle . The platform provides all the options for different OS. It will provide you with regular use packages and comes with an easy & lightweight editor.
Add-on features built for introducing various kinds of document styling and formatting for the LaTeX documents are known as packages. A package usually exists as a file or sets of files comprising certain commands and programs that either add new typesetting features or modify the already existing ones. Usually, there are no restrictions on the number of packages that you want to install, however, there exists a configuration limit on the number of packages that can be executed under a single LaTeX document, although that also depends on the package size.
Usually, a large set of pre-installed style packages comes integrated with the LaTeX installations. You can easily configure and manage these packages through the package manager of the respective TeX distribution.
However, in some situations, you do need some extra packages to bring some uniqueness to your LaTeX document. In such situations, you can visit the CTAN website. Use the CTAN search page to find out the packages easily. Once you get the package of your choice, use the indexes on the CTAN server to find out the directory from where it can be downloaded.
You can find various packages in the repositories of the package manager, depending upon the OS you are currently using.
With MikTeX, you can choose the packages individually. MikTeX has an advantage; it asks you to download the missing packages by itself, after the compilation of the document.
In TeXLive, you will find the specific packages bundled with the distribution package. For example, to provide the document in different languages related to internationalization, you need to install a package like TeXLive-Lang. In addition, you can extensively use TeXLive Manager- tlmgr to configure and manage packages separately.
Before downloading any package, you need to ensure that it contains two files, one with .dtx and the other one as .ins. The first one is a DOCTex file, which functions to keep the program and its documentation as a single entity. The second one i.e. .ins is an installation file, usually smaller in size.
Besides, always keep the practice of keeping the downloaded packages in a temporary directory.
Now hopping onto the steps to install the package.
I have summarized the entire process into 5 easy steps to install a LaTeX package . Follow along and you will find it easier to run through your system.
Click on the .ins file and run it on the LaTeX. What I meant to say is that you should open the .ins file in your LaTeX Editor. Another way is to visit the temporary directory, open the command window, and type LaTeX followed by the .ins file name. In this way, you will be able to extract the files required from the .dtx file (Because of this it is required that both the .dtx and .ins file remains in the temporary directory).
Click onto the .dtx file and Run LaTeX editor. To keep the cross-references in the correct sequence, it might happen that you need to run it multiple times. As a result, you will get a .dvi file that will explain the key features and functioning of the package.
If you want to create a PDF documentation file, then run the .dtx file on pdfLaTeX instead. In case the package contains an index file within, then you must make a .idx file as well. In some situations the system itself creates a .glo(Glossary) file, then you can run the following command to keep it correct:
Files installation means that you need to move or copy the files created in the previous step from the temporary directory to TeX Local Installation Directory Tree. you must ensure that you keep all the manually installed packages in the TeX Local Installation Directory Tree. It is important as it prevents the new packages from overwriting the files in the main directory or from getting overwritten by the main files.
In a TDS (TeX Directory Structure) compatible system, a TeX Local Installation Directory Tree is nothing but a folder containing many subfolders within it. The main folder is usually named texmf-local/ or texmf/. The main folder’s location varies from system to system. You can access it as :
Moreover, you must refer to the documentation to understand if there are any prescribed locations or folders where the files should be moved.
This is the most important step, any mistake can be catastrophic as nothing will work.
After the package installation, it is required that you update your package database. To do this, run the TeX indexer program. The indexer program comes in various names depending upon the original TeX distribution package.
Also, in Win 8 and above, you can do it easily by:
Font mapping files require an update if, during the index, any files like TrueType or Type1 fonts have been installed by default. A .map file comes attached with the packages. Depending upon the LaTeX distribution, the font map updating program exists on the updmap.
For files stored on a personal tree, use updmap --enable Map=mapfile.map
For files stored in the system directory, use updmap-sys --enable Map=mapfile.map
Run initexmf --edit-config-file updmap, add the line "Map mapfile.map to the file that opens, then run initexmf --mkmaps.
To check if a package file is available with the TeX compiler, you can use the command as depicted below:
Additionally, you can use the tool tlmgr in TeXLive to gain further information on packages. The command can be used as depicted below:
You must refer to the documentation files whenever you want to have a detailed idea about the commands and functions a package provides. For every installed package, there exists a corresponding .DVI file in the texmf/doc subdirectory. However, the location of these subdirectories varies for different LaTeX distribution packages.
You can easily access the installed packages’ distribution information using the below command. In the editor, just use the texdoc command followed by the package name and you will find out the details in front.
The basic structure of a simple LaTeX document will look like the following:
\documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{article}
Here, the LaTeX document structure contains 2 main parts.
Preamble part exists between \documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{article} and \begin{document} . The Preamble part actually tells the LaTeX program how to SciSpace the document.
In the example above, the code \documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{article} will SciSpace the content of the document using article class (produces article type) in 10pt font size, and its output would be generated in a4paper size. Like an article, one can produce different types of documents, such as books, reports, thesis, etc.
The line \usepackage{graphicx,geometry} tells the LaTeX to load additional style files for supporting more typesetting features. For example, graphicx package is loaded mainly for the support for including Images in the document, the geometry package provides more flexibility in defining page dimensions.
Document class defines the standard layout under which LaTeX will create your document. You can access various layout standards within the class files folder. These files generally contain “.cls” extension.
From the above image you can easily notice that the class parameter associated with the command \documentclass , tells LaTeX which “.cls” file to use for the current document. Also, you must put this declaration at the beginning. The option parameter will help you customize the document as desired. In case you use multiple options, you must use commas to separate the options.
By using options, you can direct the LaTeX engine to create an article with a font size of 11pt and t an output file that is suitable for printing on both sides of A4 paper.
Below is a list of document class that you can easily incorporate while creating documents in LaTeX:
Used for creating articles for scientific journals,program documentation, research papers, etc.
For Slides creation. Note that it uses SANS Sheriff as font.
Normally suited for documents containing multiple chapters, thesis, etc.
Documents required in IEEE transaction Format.
Additionally, LaTeX provides you with various options to customize your document. You can read the below mentioned list of options used quite often for document creation in LaTeX:
The default font size is 10pt. However you can keep the font size as 11pt, 12pt, etc.
LaTeX engines use letter paper as default document size. However, you can modify it to a4 paper, a5 paper, executive paper, etc.
Brings formulae with left-alignment instead of center alignment
Document class like report or book always start with a page title as default.However, while using article class you have to specify whether the page will start with title or not.
Directs LaTeX engine to typeset a document as two-column.
To fix the document orientation as landscape mode.
It commands the engine to start typesetting either on right hand pages or on the next available page. The report class as default starts on next available pages whereas the book class does on right hand pages.
Put the numbering of the formulae on the left hand side.
It states whether the output will be a double sided or single side.
The packages generally come into use when you want to insert an image or graphics, colored texts, or a source code from a file into a document. LaTeX engines come with many pre-installed packages. Additionally, you can add some extra packages if the need arises.
Here, inside the curly brackets, you should enter the name of the package that you intend to use. Also, using options with the command that can let you use certain features of the entire package.
For example, in order to add some colors while typesetting a document in LaTeX, you can use the color package as:
Body part is the place between \begin{document} and \end{document} , where the actual content of the document can be added, which includes Document Title, Author/Address/Date, Headings/Texts, Table/Figures/Equations/Lists/Quotations, Bibliography/Appendix/Glossary etc.
The LaTeX engine defines the document and author information as Top Matter. Although there does not exist any command as such \topmatter , the top matter includes document information like title, date, and author information like name, email, etc.
A standard article will begin with a document title, followed by author names and addresses. The code to obtain these are:
\author{Donald Knuth and Leslie Lamport \cr
Here, \cr is used for breaking the line after the names in \author. The document date can be simply changed by writing the date in it, for example, \date{30 August 2021}, or the date can be ignored by leaving its content empty, i.e., \
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