LaTeX and big writing projects

[Justin Harford]

Howdy 

Yeah you know what you should do is just look up an intro to latex tutorial, and follow what it tells you to do. Of course you first must have installed a distribution like texlive with a graphical front end or a texteditor like emacs. But tstart with "hello world" so to speak, and just slowly move up from there. The key difficulty that I found was compiling and troubleshooting errors, so make sure that you try to do a lot of that.

Justin 
On 01-03-2012, at 20:09, Robert cole wrote:

> Thanks for the replies, Liz and Justin.
> 
> I came across a free LaTeX book [1] at Wikibooks [2]. The book is evidently a featured book there due to its good content and formatting. It is downloadable as a PDF as well as it is readable online. I have not read through it yet, but it looks to be a 295 page book. Here is a brief description of the book from its main Wikibooks page:
> 
> This is a guide to the *LaTeX* markup language. It is intended that this can serve as a useful resource for everyone from new users who wish to learn, to old hands who need a quick reference.
> 
> I am going to search for tutorials as well, and hopefully I can just print them to PDF. My Internet connection, though fast as it is, can be slightly flaky sometimes, so I like to have materials on-hand.
> 
> I plan to possibly start reading this book after I finish the current book which I am reading. I actually have a book which I began writing while I was still using windows (it was a fictional novel), and I may just port it over and redo it using LaTeX. I stopped writing it sometime back in 2004...I hope to pick it up and finish it one day.
> 
> Once again, thanks for the replies.
> 
> Take care, everyone.
> 
> [1] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
> [2] http://www.wikibooks.org/
> 
> On 03/01/2012 06:51 PM, Justin Harford wrote:
>> I learned LaTeX back in 2006 by reading on the internet. I also took a semester class in 2007, but I mostly learned from the online tutorials.
>> On 01-03-2012, at 16:12, Liz Hare wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Robert,
>>> 
>>> I'm not Jason, but I wrote my dissertation in LaTex 14 years ago. Back then, I had someone read me the print books that had been written on the subject. I'm not sure what resources are out there now, but I bet there is a lot of online documentation. It's also helpful to look at the .tex files for documents others have written that have similar features to those you want.
>>> 
>>> It was great. I had way more control of the formatting and tables than I ever could have had with a word processor. I think if you are taking on a project like writing a thesis or a book, it's definitely worthwhile.
>>> 
>>> The disappointing part was that once I finished the degree and made it out into the real world (working in the life sciences), I couldn't use it much. Journal articles had to be submitted in Word. I didn't have any coworkers who knew LaTeX and so many documents, like grant applications, had to be in word processing files. If I had the opportunity to work on a large writing project now, I'd have a lot to re-learn, and things have probably also changed a lot since then. But I still use the notation from LaTeX to communicate with sighted people about equations.
>>> 
>>> Liz
>>> 
>>> Liz Hare PhD
>>> Dog Genetics LLC
>>> doggene at earthlink.net
>>> http://www.doggenetics.com
>>> 
>>> On 3/1/2012 6:47 PM, Robert cole wrote:
>>>> Jason,
>>>> 
>>>> Sorry to divert this, but I have read about you writing your thesis
>>>> using LaTeX on the Orca list in the past. I was always curious and
>>>> wanted to ask you what resources you used to learn LaTeX. I've been
>>>> working to learn both vi and Emacs, and I think I would rather use LaTeX
>>>> than a GUI word processor for different projects.
>>>> 
>>>> As far as the Raspberry Pi goes, I am definitely planning on getting one
>>>> (or more, if possible) when they are offered with cases. It is so
>>>> wonderful to see all of these nice flashy Linux systems coming out.
>>>> 
>>>> Although the price is out of range for me right now, I'd like to get my
>>>> hands on a KDE Plasma Active powered Spark tablet [1] one of these days.
>>>> this looks like a very promising device, especially as KDE is seeming to
>>>> become more accessible thanks to QT-AT-SPI, Orca, and all of the other
>>>> projects which are being developed. This is definitely getting exciting!
>>>> 
>>>> Take care, and my apologies for my diversion from the original topic.
>>>> 
>>>> [1] http://makeplaylive.com/
>>>> 
>>>> On 03/01/2012 03:17 PM, Jason White wrote:
>>>>> Littlefield, Tyler<speakup at braille.uwo.ca>  wrote:
>>>>>> emacs. I love it, especially with emacspeak.
>>>>> And to be more specific, AucTeX mode for anything complicated and
>>>>> Org-mode for
>>>>> notes and other simple documents.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I wrote my thesis in Emacs, with BRLTTY operating the braille display and
>>>>> emacspeak for speech output, and, of course, Git for revision control
>>>>> of the
>>>>> files. TeX gives better typeset output, reputedly, than popular word
>>>>> processors and you can use a good text editor such as Emacs for input.
>>>>> I've
>>>>> been using LaTeX instead of a word processor since 1998, so there was
>>>>> no doubt
>>>>> as to what tool to use when it came to writing my thesis.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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