INTRODUCTION

TO

Sajid Iqbal

Ph.D Student

Department of Mechatronics Engineering

Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT)

Cell no. 187-4502-2429

DEDICATION

The Prophet Muhammad (May Allah's peace

and blessings be upon him) said,

“Your Heaven lies under the feet of your

mother”

(Ahmad, Nasai).

BACKGROUND

It is all about us

B.Sc. Project Report

M.Sc. Thesis

Ph.D. Dissertation

Research Papers

OUTLINE

Journalists’ Questions (5 Ws) and 1H

1. What?

2. Why?

3. Who?

4. How?

5. When?

6. Where?

EXPECTATIONS

Spread the joy of using LaTeX

Enjoy writing with LaTeX

WHAT? LATEX OR LAY-TECH

WHAT? WHY?

LaTeX is pronounced lay-tech

not like latex gloves!

It is a powerful but relatively unknown

typesetting system.

Not like WYSIWYG tools:

MS Word

Adobe FrameMaker

Adobe InDesign

WHEN?

1970s: Donald Knuth devised TeX, a markup language for the purpose of attractively typesetting technical documents.

1985: LaTeX was then developed by Leslie Lamport as an overlay to the TeX language, enabling easier use.

Most recent version is LaTeX2e

BRIGHT SIDE

LaTeX is

big,

open source,

stable, and

used by many technical publishing

companies.

the standard for scientific documents

of high typographic quality.

WHAT? HOW?

LaTeX is a collection of defined commands

and text.

Formatting commands are embedded in the

text.

It is written on an ordinary text editor and

translated by means of a program into a

finalized version, usually in pdf format.

A SIMPLE LATEX DOCUMENT

\documentclass{article}

LaTeX commands only Preamble

\begin{document}

Text with embedded LaTeX commands

Body

\end{document}

STRUCTURE OF A .TEX FILE

*.tex file begins with

\documentclass{...}

Preamble section contains global

instructions

\usepackage{...} commands.

Body of the text begins with

\begin{document}.

At the end of the file is

\end{document}.

HOW?

Create a PDF file for viewing or printing

FIRST.TEX

FIRST.PDF

CLASSES AND PACKAGES

These are methods of LaTeX for extending it.

Different documents have different classes

for example

article

letter classes.

Packages allow you to call in extra features

e.g., there is a package for inserting figures

into your document.

\usepackage {graphicx}

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manual bibliography

Automated bibliography

BibTeX

WORD VS. LATEX [1/2]

WORD VS. LATEX [2/2]

LATEX IS FUSSY

LaTeX is very unforgiving of errors.

If you type ( instead of {, or if you use

a reserved character such as _, it will

crash or do something unintended.

HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS [1/2]

Look at the error LaTeX gave you.

Common mistakes: Mismatched begin { }, \ end { } blocks

Mismatched /

Mismatched $ or \

Misspelled keywords

o It will have a line number which will help us find the error.

HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS [2/2]

This is one reason why a well tested

template is very helpful.

The easiest way to begin using LaTeX is

to use an existing template.

WHERE? [1/2]

WHERE? [2/2]

CONCLUSIONS

For short letters, cover pages, or reports, no

fancy layout needed. Save time by using a

WYSIWYG editor - Word is the best.

For long documents: a thesis, a research

paper, use LaTeX.

If you have never used it before, you will

have to invest some time before you can get

cracking on the actual task.

IT IS ALL ABOUT YOU

Enjoy writing with LaTeX

Spread the joy of using LaTeX

REFERENCES

http://www.ctan.org/

http://www.latex-project.org/

http://openwetware.org/wiki/Word_vs._LaTeX

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocess

ing/latex_advocacy.html

http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/04/03/mic

rosoft-word-and-latex

Q & A

?