latex

LaTeX is a a system to typeset documents written by Leslie Lamport, and it is based on the TeX typesetting language written by Donald Knuth. It is an incredibly powerful tool that can seem overwhelming at first, but rest assured that learning a small fraction of its commands will allow you to make beautiful documents. It has many strengths (and some weaknesses), but the two reasons I want to include it in this class are

  1. It easily typesets mathematics beautifully
  2. It is a standard in the physics world.

latex in the cloud

In the old days (~10 years ago) if you wanted to use LaTeX you installed it on your computer, either MiKTeX on Windows or MacTeX on macs. Or, if you were hip enough to be running Linux, you could install it from your distros package manager. Today, most people will be very happy with an online version called Overleaf.

template file to try

  • A template file which show most of the basic LaTeX commands you'll need.
  • A graphic you'll need to process the above file yourself.
  • The result of processing this file with LaTeX.

    • Assignment due in class Sep. 10/12:

    Bring your laptop to lab next week and we will walk through this together in lab.

  • Create an account for yourself on Overleaf.
  • Create a new blank project and upload template.tex and rube-goldberg.jpg to it (you can ignore or delete main.tex created by Overleaf when it creates the project)
  • Modify the "source" template.tex file replacing my name as author with yours.
  • Process the LaTeX file using the "recompile" button.
  • When you are happy with how the output looks download a pdf version of the output and email it to me (jcummings@siena.edu)