Advanced LaTeX workshop details
An advanced LaTeX workshop ?!?
What
A training workshop on LaTeX for non beginners (or advanced LaTeX users) is being organized.
It is design so as to provide loads of information and relevant pointers to LaTeX users that are not 100% beginners.
Do it yourself
If you are willing to bring your laptop to test the examples provided during the workshop (resources will be provided online just before the workshop), please check that you have a working distribution of LaTeX on your laptop (this will not be done during the workshop)
Before you come to the workshop
Prerequisite
To attend this workshop it is highly recommended that you are not new to LaTeX.
This means that before the workshop starts you will have been using LaTeX at least once already and successfully in order to write a paper (conference or journal) or a report (technical report, thesis, etc).Homework
Also, before attending the workshop, you might:
- read 'A (Not So) Short Introduction to LaTeX', by E. Obedierk, in your preferred language. You will find versions in many languages at CTAN: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/
- spend some spare time visiting the CTAN archives:http://www.ctan.org
Materials
The following materials are now provided online:
- PDF slides
- archive of source files for re-generating the slides (Beamer, LaTeX)
- archive with the examples / materials
They were also provided to attendees before the workshop.
Your questions
Workshop attendees sent to me some specific LaTeX question/problem that they would like to be answered:
- when/how to use \renewcommand?
- how to build a model with input fields, use to format several elements?
- new packages:
- how to add them, to build them from .ins?
- Where to store them in the Unix directory structure?
- How to add them to the path?
- How to use texhash, etc?
- which editor to use for working both on Mac and PCs?
- layout:
- how can I change the font size for a whole table (without having to explicitly changing it for each element)?
- how to remove words that appear in the right margin (even for justified text)? How to enforce the limitation aspect of margins?
- how to build a bibliography that preserves a given format?
- pictures:
- how to arrange pictures into a matrix, and have each picture centered (multicolumn figures)?
- how to ensure figures are centered, and corresponding captions are left-justified?
- is it possible (in Beamer or otherwise) to specify the position of a piece of text or of an image with absolute (page-relative) coordinates? For example, for it to show up in the background behind some text?
- fonts: how to convert TrueType/OpenType/Type1 fonts to LaTeX form, especially if one want to use them with math?
List of topics to be discussed
Here is a list of all the topics I plan to discuss:
To begin with
- introduction
- prerequisite
- fast-forward history of LaTeX
- my use of LaTeX
- useful links: dos and FAQs
- selective bibliography
- color & formatting code for the slides
Installing, editing and running LaTeX
- what you see is what you get
- how does it work?
- some LaTeX related softwares
- how can I add styles, classes, packages?
- understanding the run log
- a few tricks about run errors
LaTeX features
- commands: (re)defining commands with arguments
- environments
- (new) lists
- tricks for floats
- tables (multi column/row, formatting, etc),
- figures (rotate, sub-figures, resize)
- equations
- algorithms
- content-related lists
- table of contents: everywhere, containing the other lists, change their layout
- index
- glossary
- bibliography: split, header, styles, insert several
- document layout and formatting
- page layout
- fancy headers/footers
- chapter/section title
- hyphenation
- spacing
- breaks
- text formatting / fonts
- symbols
- structure your document
- split the document
- write a package
- write a class
- write a class
- write a full package
- LaTeX and PDF
- the hyperref package
- the pdfsync package
- insert sounds and videos (Beamer, report/articles)
- include PDF documents with the pdfpages package
Technical scientific communication
- basics
- get organized for writing your paper
- multi-author writing
- generating good quality figures
- slides with Beamer
LaTeX and other tools
- versioning systems
- scripting
- spell-checking
- sharewares for quick edit/templates
- convert Excel tables to LaTeX
- LaTeX to html
- LaTeX and music