[SOLVED] How to use LaTex?

muunleit · 2008-09-25 05:24:13

Hey Archers

I would like to learn and use LaTex, but I can't figure out how I get something like pdf or anything else print- and e-mail-able out of the tex-file in arch.
Which programms do I need?

(I want to try to write by hand, so not to start with lyx)

regards
muunleit

Last edited by muunleit (2008-09-25 06:24:34)

fwojciec · 2008-09-25 06:00:33

Your question is a bit like "how to use html?"

Anyways, here is one good guide to get you started: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
Have a look at the Absolute Beginners section for info on the commands used to compile tex documents.
And in case you haven't yet installed texlive, have a look here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Texlive

pseudonomous · 2008-09-25 06:08:58

dvipdf, dvips will convert dvi files to pdf, ps respectively, I would think these are in texlive-core. or texlive-bin.

I personally would strongly recommend Kile or maybe Texmaker or at least emacs w/ auctex if you're going to be writing a lot of TeX documents. Texmaker is probably more beginner friendly, I think it displays icons for common symbols ... it's not like lyx which generally hides the actual LaTeX code, I guess it's what you call a LaTeX IDE. If you click the "sum" icon, it will spit out the proper code $\sum_{}^{}$ for writing a sum in sigma notation. It also provides a menu and/or keyboard shortcut driven interface with the compiling program. It also does syntax highlighting.

Kile is kind of the same, except it has a lot less of the buttons for symbols, and it does good, configurable autocompletion. (This feature, I think, saves me an appreciable ammount of time, particularly the fact that it will autmatically insert and "\end{environment}" if you insert a "\begin{environment}") I personally like Kile, a whole, whole lot (Kile is the reason why i use KDE). Kile is KDE native and depends on KDE3libs (stable verions) and KDE4libs (svn version in aur). You also need Kdvi, Kpdf, and Kghostview if you want integrated previewers. Besides having less icons for code insertion, I think Kile pretty much does everything texmaker does (I haven't use texmaker in a while, though, it might have autocompletion to by now)

There's also a gtk solution winefish, which also does configurable autocompletion, but not, in my opinion, as well as kile. It's certainly not bad, though.

Auctex is an extension for emacs and I haven't used it much, it at least does syntax highlighting and probably provides some useful keybindings for emacs. There's also Yatex, which is another Latex extension for emacs that I haven't any experiance at all with.

I think there's also something you can use with Vim, but I don't know anything about that. (I'm not really a vi fan, myself)

muunleit · 2008-09-25 06:23:35

fwojciec wrote:

Your question is a bit like "how to use html?"

Not at all. I've began to read a beginners-guide, but I could not find out from where I get the latex, xdvi or latexpdf programs.

Thank you for the fast answers, I will try it.

Xappe · 2008-09-25 11:53:20

All you need is located in extra. To install most of TeXlive, install texlive-most...it's quite a lot to download though (around 1GB iirc)...

If you want a more slim installation, search for texlive with pacman and install the parts of it that you think you'll need.

As for an editor, I use gedit with the latex plugin.

Last edited by Xappe (2008-09-25 11:55:38)

kakTuZ · 2008-09-25 18:38:48

I liked "The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX" http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/ when I started. Available in a few languages including German.

Last edited by kakTuZ (2008-09-25 18:39:51)

skottish · 2008-09-25 18:41:39

I know that this is marked solved, but don't let arooaroo's excellent guide go un-noted:

http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/latex/

muunleit · 2008-09-26 01:28:38

Thanks to all of you.
I tried a little bit, found what I searched for, like Texmaker and will read the guides soon.

stojic · 2008-09-27 13:38:02

If you want to build pdfs directly, you can use pdflatex (it's in package texlive-bin).

Arch Linux

#1 2008-09-25 05:24:13

[SOLVED] How to use LaTex?

#2 2008-09-25 06:00:33

Re: [SOLVED] How to use LaTex?

#3 2008-09-25 06:08:58

Re: [SOLVED] How to use LaTex?

#4 2008-09-25 06:23:35

Re: [SOLVED] How to use LaTex?

#5 2008-09-25 11:53:20

Re: [SOLVED] How to use LaTex?

#6 2008-09-25 18:38:48

Re: [SOLVED] How to use LaTex?

#7 2008-09-25 18:41:39

Re: [SOLVED] How to use LaTex?

#8 2008-09-26 01:28:38

Re: [SOLVED] How to use LaTex?

#9 2008-09-27 13:38:02

Re: [SOLVED] How to use LaTex?

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