[HOWTO] LaTeX Quickstart Guide

Malice · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 13 Jun 2003 Posts: 78

Also...

Anyone have a semi-decent way of spell checking a latex file??

You can use the -t arg with Aspell

slartibartfasz · Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:30 am Post subject:

if u use vim - try the following packages, both ignore program languages but check comments in source code - sounds like what u are looking for

:

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=499
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=195

and afaik it is possible to have 1 external file with source code and tell the listings package to include lines x-y while keeping the line numbering in tex consistent from one listing to the other...
_________________
To an engineer the glass is neither half full, nor half empty - it is just twice as big as it needs to be.

arand · Apprentice Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 215

In relation to the spelling question. I checked in kile with a simple document. Kile seems to at least ignore stuff like usepackage however it will not ignore the argument like graphicx.

slartibartfasz · Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2003 3:50 pm Post subject:

softchill · Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2003 8:57 pm Post subject:

I'm looking for the package where pdflatex is... I thought it was in tetex, but it is'nt. Can anyone guide me ?

arand · Apprentice Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 215

I just Emerged kile on a new system and it automagically was installed along the way. I tried qpkg.

softchill · Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2003 9:29 pm Post subject:

I pretended to emerge kile, and here's the output:

arand · Apprentice Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 215

Like I said I am not sure what package is needed for pdflatex. If you don't want to emerge all of those packages

I would suggest that you just compile everything and see if it works. If it doesn't then you can unmerge the apps you don't need. If you want to cut down a little on the apps installed try setting your use varibles to include -cups so that you don't have to compile cups.

daen1543 · Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2003 11:36 am Post subject:

Pdflatex is just a symlink to pdftex, which is part of the tetex package. Hope this helps.

don quixada · l33t Joined: 15 May 2003 Posts: 810

I use Jext for my LaTeX editor. It's a java-based text editor. In fact, I use it to do all of my coding. It has a plugin for MikTeX (for windows) that can be modified for Linux to generate dvi/pdf files and it has a built-in console. It's not GTK but you can at least make it _look_ like Gnome.

As far as spelling goes, it's a bit dodgy. I copy my code into OpenOffice.org and it does the spell checking; I have gotten (g)vim (using Aspell) to do it for me too, but it was too annoying using that program as a word processor so I stopped. My brother uses emacs and it can be setup to spell-check and colourize (hehe, two different countries' spelling rules in one word) your code, but I don't like emacs either (I'm picky aren't I?).

For use with pdflatex: As far as images go, I convert the picture to eps (using Gimp) then I convert again to PDF (using eps2pdf). Converting them to PDF makes them easy to manipulate in the LaTeX document (i.e. scaling, rotating etc.).

As far as a random (but important) LaTeX tip goes: \usepackage{fullpage} is your friend. Unless you're writing a book, you'll want to use this as it yields correct margin sizes for reports. Long/short: it will make your reports look oh-so-much better!

As far as touting LaTeX goes: it's great and I even did my resume in it (it looks awesome)!

I hope these tips can be of some use to you...

good luck!

dq

StinkyLou · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2003 Posts: 11

slartibartfasz,

Thanks for an outstanding quick-start guide! I wish I'd had something so concise when I started learning LaTeX. :wink:

Malice,

bludger · Guru Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Posts: 389

Does anyone have any information on using latex with truetype fonts, such as the standard microsoft fonts? I would like to be able to print to pdf and have something that looks good both on paper and on the screen.

XeroByte · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2002 Posts: 21 Location: Belgium

Thank you dude, needed a guide like that... haven't read the whole thing because I'll try it later, but bookmarked the link...

EDIt: when I run 'emerge dvipdfm' it wants to install an older package of tetex (1.x.x) tho I have installed the newer 2.x.x... Is that supposed to be or is that a mistake?

slartibartfasz · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 1:28 pm Post subject:

don quixada · l33t Joined: 15 May 2003 Posts: 810

Another useful tip which I forgot to mention was getting a degree symbol:

bmichaelsen · Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2003 10:57 pm Post subject:

For all interested in vim-latex, here is a ebuilds:
http://www.breakmygentoo.net/ebuilds/vim-latex-1.5_rc1.ebuild.tar.bz2

as you might wonder, it is not yet in portage ....
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30285

Greetz, Björn

don quixada · l33t Joined: 15 May 2003 Posts: 810

Could you tell us a little more about vim-latex? (or provide a link?) My first experience with LaTeX and vim was not too successful, but maybe I should try again.

Thx.

dq

bmichaelsen · Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2003 5:46 am Post subject:

slartibartfasz · Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2003 12:33 pm Post subject:

Birnenpfluecker · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 2:31 pm Post subject:

thx for that guide. I'm emerging and will test it. Found no proper guide how to start until I found this one. Good work.

Birnenpfluecker · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 7:59 pm Post subject:

Ready with the compiling, but I have a problem. I'm a noob to linux and doesn't which program I need to read the *.dvi files....
So I can't read the manuals you posted. Sorry for the stupid question

don quixada · l33t Joined: 15 May 2003 Posts: 810

Install `xdvik'. (`emerge -s' is your friend.)

dq

Birnenpfluecker · Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 12:27 pm Post subject:

thx for the fast answer

bmichaelsen · Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2003 1:28 pm Post subject:

vim-latex is now in portage:

Cloney · n00b Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 65

Just to say that (for ~x86 anyway) Kile 1.6 is in arch. Hopefully this will fix the broken Latex reference file, and provide some Quick Build options that don't immediately fire up a viewer.

I'm compiling at the moment, I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for this thread by the way - Kile is fantastic, and has really eased my relationship with LaTeX. I thought I hated it, but it turned out I just hated eMacs :twisted:

EDIT: Right, got it up. The editor's changed to the kate editor, embedded, which is a bit more powerful (haven't fiddled with all the options yet). The LaTeX quick-reference works (woo!), but there's still no option for a Quick Build that doesn't open a viewer. (I think I'll file a Kile feature request).

What bugs me is when you're editing page n of an m page document, and doing a quick build always starts the viewer up on page 1, so you have to scroll through. What I really want is kghostview on file-watch mode to simply be brought to the front on a quickbuild.

UPDATE: Idiot that I am, I just discovered watch mode, which does exactly what I need. Was this in 1.5.2?

Cloney