LaTeX 101 - An Introduction

Research Bazar (ResBaz) 2023

Nelis Drost, (Jens Brinkmann)

The University of Auckland

Thursday, April 13, 2023

What is \(\LaTeX\)

  • Pronounciation: /ˈlɑːtɛk/ or /ˈleɪtɛk/
  • \(\LaTeX\) is a typesetting system and has been around for almost 40 years (since 1984)
  • While seeming quite nerdy, (rather) recent ways of interacting with it make it more user-friendly and approchable
  • Think of it as doing some programming to get some neat pdf output, many editors require compiling (press a button and wait)

The name TeX is intended by its developer to be \(\tau \epsilon \chi\), TeX is an abbreviation of τέχνη (ΤΕΧΝΗ technē), Greek for both “art” and “craft”, which is also the root word of technical.

What is so special about \(\LaTeX\)

  • It separates content from formatting, letting you focus on writing and fiddling 🥸
  • Cross-platform compatibility (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, …)
  • There is a wide community and often several ways to get things done. It is rare that you are the first to ask a question.
  • Most of the (good) books, journal articles, etc. are created using \(\LaTeX\)
  • At this year’s ResBaz, we have two more advanced sessions LINK A LINK B run by Eirian. She is a \(\LaTeX\) superstar. Think of our current session the foundation.

Showing off how cool it is

Visualisations in TikZ

Example showing the power of the TikZ package

Visualisations in TikZ -1

Focused ion beam system, Author: Clemens Helfmeier Source

Visualisations in TikZ -2

2D Visualisation in TikZ Source

Visualisations in TikZ -3

3D Visualisation in TikZ Source

Visualisations in TikZ -4

(Neuronal) Network Visualisation in TikZ Source

Easily adjust from one to two column layouts

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper,onesided]{article} 
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
  \section{My Title}
  \subsection{Sub-Section}
  \textbf{Printing 1 to 3 paragraphs}\\
  \lipsum[1-3]
  \subsection{Sub-Section}
  \lipsum[1]
\end{document}

Note that: …onesided… One Column

#| \documentclass[10pt,a4paper,twocolumn]{article} 
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
  \section{My Title}
  \subsection{Sub-Section}
  \textbf{Printing 1 to 3 paragraphs}\\
  \lipsum[1-3]
  \subsection{Sub-Section}
  \lipsum[1]
\end{document}

Note that: …twocolumn… Two Column

Maths/Formulae

External Files

  • You (usuall) reference external files; this means you might have a ‘Images’ folder. All updates (while maintaining the file name) come into effect quickly (after recompiling); consider a version control mechanism such as GitHub to avoid data loss
  • This also works for imported data (often in the csv file format) which you can get to automatically update tables
  • Even layouts can be changed

Workflow for changing things in citations (Zotero) or getting a citation from a paper (three steps and done), backed up to GitHub, don’t worry

Update a picture to the latest version, keep the name, don’t worry about overwriting, because you have it on GitHub

Because of LaTeXIt knowing the syntax can help you with creating vis. for your PowerPoint, Slides, … Presentation

Syntax highlighting for code

Change a caption on several figures, update the ToC,…

Advantages

Note

There is a trade-off between time invested upfront (learning \(\LaTeX\) etc. vs. and time saved in the long-run. As many of you might work on their PhD thesises, this time balance one day before the deadline vs. some hours or days can’t be traded-off 1:1

  • (good) \(\LaTeX\) output looks epic (at least in most cases)
    • it decides where pictures are placed
    • maths is neatly rendered
    • how line-breaks happen (justify text is using a dictionary for line-breaks, unlike many wysiwyg editors)
    • multi-column layouts on one page

Advantages - continued

  • it is free and not tied to any big corporation, you can often write in any text editor, browser etc.
  • it is no closed source file (unlike a .docx or so) this means we can use Git(Hub) EXAMPLE and other version control systems (we can run things like a diff on it, EXAMPLE CODE GOES HERE)
    • no proprietary software that
      • might disappear from the market
      • charges you an arm and a leg especially over time with a subscription model (yes, I am looking at you, Adobe)
      • means you can keep this compeltely offline/local/no-cloud, etc. good for Ethics Approvals and sensitive data, …
  • you can mostly get outputs to several outputs with altering a few lines (vs. clicking on every slide or here and there)

Advantages - continued

  • you can customise it heavily
  • you can have inline comments (for future you, for your supervisor, to toggle things on/off)
  • If you ingest some code, tables, data, a lot of figures ResBaz Workshop Python for image manipulation and repeatable research pipelines, you will learn to love \(\LaTeX\)
  • Referencing is quite easy, especially if paired with a reference manager such as Zotero, see ResBaz session Managing References With Zotero
  • Maths! \(f_{c}=z^{2}+c\) AND Mathpix Snipping
  • Plotting (again some learning curve, but no Excel to Word to something schenanigans where you might miss out the latest version of a file and try to publish something wrong)
  • same goes for citations, referencing figures, placing figures (yes, you can specify that it shall be right there where you want it, but you can also let \(\LaTeX\) work it’s magic)
  • Portability: LaTeX documents are portable and can be easily converted to other formats, such as PDF, HTML, or EPUB.

Advantages - continued

Symbols often render very neatly, sometimes workarounds are needed

M\={a}ori

For Macrons a more advanced approach is described here, as Unicode is mostly used, you can type Māori (so on a Mac use the long-press option ā to write Māori or change the keyboard style) or copy-paste such characters.

Disadvantages

  • it takes time to learn (Overleaf and other more relevant UI etc. make it easier)
  • it can be very fiddely (if you want specifics with tables, or placing images)
  • the collaboration features are quite limited out of the box, yes, a lot can be done (see Eirian), but that mostly requires you to a) bring/acquire some coding knowledge, b) invest time; here, MS Word Clearly wins
  • plugins such as Grammarly don’t work ootb, for VSCode, you can integrate these as an Extension, on Overleaf there is a buggy workaround

Alternatives

  • the ususal suspects: Microsoft Word, Google Doc, Libre/Open/… Office
    • these are wysiwyg (what you see is what you get)/gui-based, point, click, change.
    • their benefits are usually that many not-so-techy people use them and can colleaborate
    • some things are quite efficient (Tables, for examples, but we’ll provide you with some neat workarounds) especially the tracking of changes in MSWord and placing images. Yes, if you want to mock up a layout point-and-click it usually a lot quicker

How does creating a document in \(\LaTeX\) work?

While our current session is just a taster Session, some pointers at important elements follow below.

Preamble

This is similar to programming where you start with importing relevant libraries (things others did to make your life easier) and definitions (for example, colours)

\documentclass[twoside,openright,a4paper]

\usepackage[usenames, dvipsnames, table]{xcolor}

\addbibresource{references.bib}

\definecolor{uoadarkblue}{RGB}{0, 70, 127}

Main body

You can either - write all your document in one text file (with the file extension *.tex) - \(\LaTeX\) commands usually start with the backslash character - as in all coding, it is important to close brackets that you have opened and to be quite picky with the details - \(\LaTeX\) is mostely whitespace-insensitive, this means you can write your .tex document without having to worry about empty lines, etc. This also means, if you want to include empty lines, you have to enforce them - \\ (two backslashes) - \newline - \hfill \break - see also - It is good practice not to create one huge .tex file but to use the \include command to include chapters

\include{Titlepage}
\part{Background}
\include{Chapters/Intro}

How to get \(\LaTeX\)

  • There are various options.
  • The following (non-exhaustive) list goes from minimalistic (bare-bones) to specific environments either executed locally on your machine or in the cloud.

How to get \(\LaTeX\) - the core

Idea: As software-agnostic as possible - Download a \(\LaTeX\) distribution, for example MiKTeX - install pandoc - use any texteditor - Windows: - Notepad - Mac: - TextEdit - Linux: - various - Cross-Platform: - VSCode - Sublime - on the commandline: type pandoc -i ~/Desktop/myWritings.tex -o ~/Desktop/MyRenderedLaTeX.pdf - inspect your neatly renedered document

How to get \(\LaTeX\) - special editors

The idea is to have a local installation and a specialised editor - Texifier - TeXLive - TeXStudio - TeXMaker

How to get \(\LaTeX\) - In the browser

  • Overleaf is quote famous for bringing $to the masses
  • A pro and con at the same time: It runs in the cloud, you don’t need to install a \(\LaTeX\) distribution, special editor, etc.
  • Recently, they added “Overleaf On-Premises” to circumvent privacy challenges
  • there is a free plan which might be a good fit for beginners or if it is just you wokring on a dcument
  • there are paid plans, including student plans which are currently NZD109/year
    • The main advantages:
      • Invite collaborators, so work on the same document at the same time
      • Have a similar tracking mechanism as MS Word’s Track Changes
      • Sync to Dropbox, GitHub, etc.
  • UoA Bioengineering staff/students get Overleaf premium free ALTERNATVIELY: There is another ResBaz session: Stop Paying for Free Software

How to get \(\LaTeX\) - The meta version

Quarto can be considered one level above in terms of abstraction text

  • \(\LaTeX\) is just one of its output, the other benefit is a direct integration with Python, R, Julia, Observable
  • you can write in markdown syntax (.md) so for example **my text** (md notation) as oppsed to \textbf{my text}
  • the integration with code means you won’t have to copy-paste results back and forth
    • this point can’t be stressed enough! You are so likely to forget updating a plot
    • you also get reproducability, because it isn’t just a screen shot that is integrated into your document <!– (There are approaches where you can get some (rudimentary) Python code into LaTeX, even into Overleaf, but these are mainly for handling several files (batch processing) keeping track of Python version- Coding colaborators can contribute via a Git workflow
  • Communicate results to non-coding collaborators using git (e.g., GitHub)

On a side-note

This deck of slides (based on RevealJS, it can also handle a lot of code.

Trying to make your \(\LaTeX\) journey easier

  • Template
    • Resulting in a neat design (including page numbers in roman, arabic or intentionally omitted)
    • Shows how to get certain things done (Part, Section, Sub-Section, labels,…)
    • There are other templates of Overleaf by the UoA
  • TablesGenerator and or LaTeXTables
  • Mathpix Snip
  • LaTeXIt (to quickly create equations)
  • You can write in Markdown notation and use Pandoc to convert to \(\LaTeX\) or MSWord *.docx (which you can easily pass to strict Word users)