LaTeX Thread (Useful links and tips within)

**Timbuk2**

I think it would be useful to have a guide to LaTeX and how to use it stickied on the Maths forum would be useful. Does such a guide exist?

Mod Note:

Just noticed there is now a LaTeX forum which can be found here

Thomas_S_Hunterson

There's a latex tutorial here: http://www.mts.jhu.edu/~ers/learn-latex/

gerry87

Best i've seen is http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Dr. Wilkins from my Alma Mater, Trinity College, has a rather nice LaTeX tutorial that helped me with my FYP report.

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/

Here's a handy website that lists pretty much every symbol you can use, and their associated command.

antiselfdual

And here's a few thousand more...

fh041205

Guys and lassies, I'm wondering can anyone help me a little with a LaTeX problem? I'm completely new to it (started last week) and am currently using tikzpicture to draw simple diagrams. It seems to work fine as the sole piece in a document but when I include the same text in another document (simply by copying it over rather than 'include' in the LaTeX sense) it doesn't produce a picture. I've a feeling i'm not including the right packages in the preamble (i've included tikz and pgf).

Also, is there an easier way to produce simple mathematical diagrams other than tikzpicture. Bear in mind I'm a novice, thanks for any help.

Oh, I'm using XP.

antiselfdual

Just include tikz, and put all the tikz commands inside

\begin{tikzpicture}

\end{tikzpicture}

?

Works for me...

I don't know if there's an easier way to do pictures, possibly there is, but I like tikz even if it seems terrifyingly powerful compared to everything I've ever wanted to draw.

Fremen

I never messed around with any built-in drawing software. To be honest, the path of least resistance is
Mathematica (or wolfram alpha) -> screenshot -> jpeg -> import jpeg

though I've forgotten the command to do the last bit :pac:

If it's just a project or thesis, I'd go with this way. Might be worth learning the built-in stuff if you're doing something that's publication quality though.

fh041205

Is \usepackage{tikz} the right way to include it?

Fremen

Well, my preamble looks like this
\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{report}

\usepackage{graphicx,epsfig}

\usepackage{amsfonts}

\usepackage{amsthm, amsmath}


and the figure looks like this:
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale = .55]{MertonVega.pdf}
\caption{caption here}
\label{fig:MertonVega}
\end{figure}

For some reason I converted the images to PDF... maybe you have to do that. I forget how or why though. Not sure how much of this is strictly necessary either. I'd just get it working with some random PDF then play with it until it breaks.

djpbarry

gerry87 wrote: »

For some reason I converted the images to PDF... maybe you have to do that. I forget how or why though.

You were probably compiling with PDFLatex? When compiling with Latex, graphics have to be in EPS format. If you're compiling with PDFLatex, then JPG, PNG or PDF can be used.

Fremen

yup, I used gedit in unbuntu and compiled with PDFLatex, that would explain it.

antiselfdual

fh041205 wrote: »

Is \usepackage{tikz} the right way to include it?

Yeah... as in I have a document like

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}

\section{Section}

Some font, some font, some font.

\subsection{Now a TikZ diagram}

We can draw a picture of a lightcone!

\begin{center}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{scope}[scale=1.3]
\shade[inner color=yellow, outer color=yellow!50!white!50] (-3,-3) -- (0,0) -- (-3,3) -- (3,3) -- (0,0) -- (3,-3) -- (-3,-3);
\draw[->] (-3.1,0) -- (3.1,0);
\draw[->] (0,-3.1) -- (0,3.1);
\draw[color=black,->] (-3,-3)--(3,3);
\draw[color=black,->] (3,-3)--(-3,3);
\draw (0.,3.3) node {$ct$};
\draw (3.3,0) node{$x$};
\draw[->] (0,0) -- (0.8,2);
\draw[->] (0,0) -- (2,1);
\draw (0.8,2.2) node{\scriptsize $v<c$};
\draw (2.1,1.2) node{\scriptsize $v>c$};
\draw (3.1,3.1) node{\scriptsize$v=c$};
\draw (0.6,-1.5) node{Past};
\draw (-0.8,1.8) node{Future};
\end{scope}

\end{tikzpicture}
\end{center}

\end{document}

and it works fine (though I'm using linux not XP, but I've definitely used Tikz on Windows too...)

I'm not sure I understand though, is the problem that tikz only works when there is no other text other than between the \begin{ and \end{tikzpicture} commands? Are you using any other packages in the other documents that might interfere with it? (I seem to remember there being an issue involving using the color package and tikz).

gerry87

djpbarry wrote: »

You were probably compiling with PDFLatex? When compiling with Latex, graphics have to be in EPS format. If you're compiling with PDFLatex, then JPG, PNG or PDF can be used.

I didn't say that

bnt

One suggestion I might add is to use the \displaystyle method when posting here. It makes the formula a little larger and more legible.

Before:
[latex]
\frac{d}{dx} \int_0^x{f(t)dt}=\int{\left(\frac{d}{dx}f(x)\right)dx}=f(x)
[/latex]

After:
[latex]\displaystyle
\frac{d}{dx} \int_0^x{f(t)dt}=\int{\left(\frac{d}{dx}f(x)\right)dx}=f(x)
[/latex]

\displaystyle 
\frac{d}{dx} \int_0^x{f(t)dt}=\int{\left(\frac{d}{dx}f(x)\right)dx}=f(x)

bnt

Something weird I've noticed when editing a post containing LaTeX: sometimes, plus (+) signs go missing after you save the edit. The workaround seems to be: select "Go Advanced" when editing, that seems to avoid the issue.

testing: [latex]r^2=x^2+y^2[/latex]

wantacookie

Just saw this thread, I found LaTeX so useful doing my final year project. Here are some notes and a sample .tex file I made for learning LaTeX when I was giving a tutorial in TCD.

Hope they are some help to some one! I got really enthusiastic learning tricks in LaTeX during the year

Bit cynical