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The best text composition system, the largest delicious for eyes of one who wants what he writes to be an ode to hairsalon and to good taste. Because "the important thing is not what is said but how it is said" (Cicero) we should all know how to use LaTeX. |
I have to confess something: I love the art of typography. That is why I hate to see (my eyes hurt) when a document arrives in my hands where the good rules of the correct proportions and other visual relationships of the sources and spaces in a written text are outraged. In fact, I am a declared enemy of some fonts (like the horrible "comic sans") and I don't really like WYSIWYG type word processors (like MSWord or Open / LibreOffice Writer).
In this, which will be the first installment of many more, I will try to explain to you, my friend, the reason for my curious opinion.
If I mentioned that there are many, it is because the matter is so extensive that trying to establish exact quotas to summarize it would be very audacious (and it is that on the other hand I also have the not very pleasant habit of extending myself more than necessary when speaking or writing). For now the first thing is to tell you, dear reader, what LaTeX is and why it deserves to be used.
What is LaTeX?
According to Wikipedia, "LaTeX is a text composition system, specially oriented to the creation of books, scientific and technical documents that contain mathematical formulas."
Legend has it that a mathematician named Donald Knuth (who dedicated his life more specifically to algorithmics) exploded in anger when the publishing house to which he entrusted his greatest work "The Art of Programming Computers" (a sacred book for programmers) delivered the printed sample of its first volumes. Donald who is an extreme perfectionist was not at all satisfied with the presentation of the document and said what anyone in his place would have said "is that if you want something well done, you have to do it yourself" (or something like that). In effect, she took a sabbatical to give birth to what in my opinion is the greatest creation in terms of software: TeX.
As a first step, the year he had originally budgeted was not enough: he spent eight more; and second, although TeX was a marvel, it was only understood by its creator and the few minds sufficiently prepared (in fact, only to use the minimum you had to know how to program). It was very complex. It was there that another algorithmic genius arrived, Leslie Lamport, who created a series of macros for TeX that made it accessible to anyone. LaTeX was born.
Why should you give LaTeX a try?
Well, the benefits of LaTeX are many and huge. In fact I learned that with LaTeX new and pleasant surprises arrive every day at their potential. However, since I assume that most readers touch the subject for the first time, I will try to be brief and simple:
- The aesthetics of a document made with LaTeX is very (mmmuuuyyyy) superior to that of one made with a WYSIWYG-type processor (such as Writer, Abiword or MSWord).
- No complex expression is a problem for LaTeX (such as mathematical formulas, tables, graphs, diagrams, etc.).
- LaTeX takes care of the typography and format of the document leaving the user only to worry about the content. So is! You just type that LaTeX takes care of the presentation (and boy does it do it well).
- If the document is long, LaTeX greatly simplifies the task of structuring and organizing it.
- LaTeX is free software and the community involved is huge. The amount of documentation is enormous and someone will always be willing to help. In fact I dare to say that there is no other software so much information available on the Net as with LaTeX.
- There are packages for everything !!! (Packages are, so to speak, extensions of the power of LaTeX that allow you to do all kinds of additional tasks; we will talk about these in another installment).
- With LaTeX not only articles or books can be made ... also letters, slides, posters, posters, web pages, among others, all very professional.
And many more advantages that we will reveal throughout the following installments.
What should I consider before learning how to use LaTeX?
In my humble opinion LaTeX has no downsides ... just maybe that some of its features can make a few (at least the impatient) give up. I repeat: LaTeX is great but perhaps it would be good for the new user to find out beforehand about certain things that make him different from others and that may lead to difficulties.
LaTeX is a text composition language, and not a processor. This means that it is necessary to enter some not very complicated commands (code) within the document to obtain some results. An example would be that if at any time you need to center part of the text, you should write something like:
begin {center} This is centered. end {center}
But this should not be a cause for concern since it is very easy to get used to (one eventually realizes that it is even more efficient than pointing to the text with the pointer and then looking for the appropriate button), and because LaTeX editors (later we will talk of them) provide us with all the commands in an agile way.
On the other hand, in LaTeX it could be said that you work on templates (there are many and very good ones on the Net). However, creating a template from scratch requires significant effort (although ultimately very satisfying).
But I insist, LaTeX is not complicated in itself, it requires that the user acquire another mentality, and that is the complicated thing about the matter, because it is actually simple and pleasant.
Should you try LaTeX? Total I do not write scientific documents
Of course. Any document looks better when typed in LaTeX regardless of the content. The fonts that LaTeX boasts are very beautiful yet serious (remember that LaTeX was initially designed for academic settings and you would never expect to deliver a report in, say, Disney or StarWars fonts).
In fact I have shown LaTeX to friends whose field of action is literature (zero formulas) and they have been delighted by the presentation and use it without problems. On the other hand, there are packages in LaTeX specially designed for each profession. Let me explain: there are packages for musicians to write scores, chemists to draw laboratory elements, chess players to include their codes, etc.
I think I want to try it, what is the next step?
Excellent!!! But let's wait a moment ... in the next installment I will clarify other pertinent details and we will talk about the installation (again I clarify that I assume that the reader hears about this marvel for the first time). What will we discuss next time? Basically from this:
- LaTeX distributions
- Necessary programs (mainly editors)
- What a LaTeX document looks like
- The "famous" packages
- About templates
I will not take more time dear reader. Until next time.
How? That I talked a lot about the good aesthetics of documents made with LaTeX and did not leave samples? OK ... here are some links for you to taste a little:
- http://texample.net/ (Page with lots of graphics made by collaborating users)
- http://rt0016xp.eresmas.net/lplh/latex-humanidades.pdf (A fun short story tutorial starring Tux)
- http://www.latextemplates.com/templates/curriculum_vitaes/3/cv_3.pdf (Are you looking for a job? I don't think they will deny you with a resume like that)
- http://www.uv.es/~ivorra/Libros/Algcom.pdf (A very good book)
Ahhh… printed is wonderful.
Interested in make a contribution?
Of course by editors we can not complain.
Lyx, Textmaker, LaTexila, Winefish, Kile or Gummi are editors that we can find directly in the official Ubuntu repository.
But I don't know why I smell that since this is part one, the editors' thing is precisely part of this article.
I make this little comment as a prelude ...
Thanks and regards.
As a note, I will point out that scientific journals, university articles and in general the entire field of high-level academic publication, MAND that their editors carry out their work in TEX ...
LaTex is synonymous with documentary seriousness.
In certain areas of university administration and in some scientific journals it is, but I think I have exceeded the literal "OBLIGAN". I wanted to highlight at the levels where it is used so that people perceive the seriousness and professionalism of the LaTEX environment ...
I correct myself with a "RECOMMEND" ... 😉 ... I really don't think they force almost anyone to restrictively use LaTEX ... it was to emphasize ...
A greeting.
PS: On the other hand it is a shame that what they force is to use proprietary formats, and not even updated! … 🙁
You have left me with honey on my lips. Excellent post, congratulations.
Interesting. I heard about latex, but what I read there I did not understand a rubber. From what I saw, you had to download like 2Gb of libraries and that's when I said, "It doesn't matter."
The truth is that the examples that I see there, except for the graphics, don't seem like much: S. Anti-climatic medium after so much fanfare.
I will be aware of the other posts in the series.
It's nice to find blogs with content, waiting for the other parties to see if I learn latex. Greetings and keep it up
hahaha I killed the "disney or starwars sources" I have seen some cases that good ... a month ago I wanted to learn how to use LaTeX, I have a manual that is out there and I started with gummi and lyX, which are great to learn, what I recommend everyone, besides that the work is very formal and beautiful, its syntax is a form of mental exercise xD, but you get used to the styles and others.
waiting for the second part pablo! ^^
I am a great post, I really liked the cv3 model, you could tell me where the .tex style / model of that cv3 is, I would like to mark one for me but it has to be with the model because I do not know about Latex.
we look forward to the second part 😀
To me the truth is Comic Sans style letters or letters that are supposed to be pretty soon, I don't like them. I like the simple ones better.
Let's see if they fix my computer and I investigate it a little
It sounds very promising, the truth is that if the objective of the article was to arouse curiosity, you have undoubtedly achieved it
I was using LaTeX for a while and the truth is that its possibilities are many. However, I keep my Open / LibreOffice forever. Personally, I do not make documents that are too long (maximum a hundred pages loaded with letters) and with the styles of page, paragraph, character, etc. It is enough for me and I have enough to make a document for me as attractive as a LaTeX one.
In addition there is the issue of having to install more than 1GB to be able to compile documents and the time that is required in the header of the document (although with LibreOffice it should take more or less the same to configure the styles to taste). It does not seem as practical as a visual editor, despite its shortcomings.
Anyway I will be very attentive to this series of entries, to see if you show something that encourages me to give it a serious try again 🙂
I regret to say that this is not the case, at least in the area of biotechnology, process engineering and others, the top publications (highest impact index) do not ask for latex, they still ask that the manuscripts be presented in MS Office format, that is, DOC (not DOCX, not ODF, much less latex).
One may agree or not (I do not agree with the request for the use of a proprietary word processor) but that is the truth, on the other hand Latex is not very effective for sending manuscripts.
Another thing, of course, is that scientific journals, in their writing, use Latex, as they do in their final writing, Springer, for example.
I say this from experience, since I have published some papers, and it is so, if not, check the instructions for the authors. I do not know the publications of applied physics or mathematics, where it may be as you describe, but you can not say that it is FORCED to use Latex, because IT IS NOT SO.
But is Latex compliant with APA standards?