LaTex Help

Teg Veece

I'm interested in learning how to us LaTeX in order to prepare reports for college but I have no idea how to go about doing this.
Could someone please provide me with a program that will enable me to compile a tex file and convert it into a pdf.

Any other advice anyone could offer on the subject would be great as I am literally clueless at the mo.

deRanged

On windows I use WinEdt with MikTek. I reckon a beginner wouldn't have too much trouble with this.

On linux I just use vi and latex.

The best guide I've found is the not short guide to latex. (warning - that's a link to a 2meg pdf)

oscarBravo

A neat way to ease into LaTeX, if you're on Linux, is LyX. Quite easy to use, with all the yummy typesetting quality of LaTeX.

ircoha

Just wondering whether there are any other thoughts on this product?

Coming from a MS Word environment, is it a steep LC or is it even worth the effort?

Thanks

oscarBravo

It couldn't be much more different from Word. As to whether the LC is worth it, it depends on the value you put on LaTeX's capabilities - if you want superb typesetting, especially for mathematics, and don't want to have to think much about layout, it's excellent.

ircoha

Thanks for response.
how is it on referencing/bibliographing?

has anyone used BibTex ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BibTeX

Has anybody used it for refing stuff from the web, particularly if there is no apparent author, or is this frowned upon in serious academic work due to the lack of peer-review?

can u specify the output to match say a Univ driven standard such as Harvard?

Thanks

oscarBravo

ircoha wrote: »

Thanks for response.
how is it on referencing/bibliographing?

I haven't used it for academic purposes, but it's supposed to be excellent.

can u specify the output to match say a Univ driven standard such as Harvard?

http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/harvard/