A Very Short Introduction to LaTeX

LaTeX

Thanks for reading this post¹.

LaTeX is a very important software that we use in the Lab for producing almost all of our documents. This includes reports, articles, projects, thesis, slides, posters, and even visitor cards. So, it is something that you must learn.

How to start? I don’t need to write a tutorial, since you can find very good ones on the internet. My personal preference is the Wikibook about LaTeX that you can find at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX

Don’t be lazy, go ahead and read it. There is a pdf version for printing and online reading. Although it has a steep learning curve, it is something that is so useful that every minute you will expend on learning it will certainly pay back.

But before start reading the book, please install LaTeX with all files and options. Go to your Linux terminal and type

sudo apt-get install texlive-full

It will take sometime, but everything will be installed and ready to use.

It is not a coincidence that I chose this title for the post. There is very famous LaTeX tutorial named The not so Short Introduction to LaTeX. You could also decide to read it.

If you still think that other text editors are better than LaTeX, that is too complicated, read The Beauty of LaTeX.

Good luck! Remember, we are here to help, but do your homework first.