LaTeX Beginner's Guide

When there’s a scientific or technical paper to write, the versatility of LaTeX is very attractive. But where can you learn about the software? The answer is this superb beginner’s guide, packed with examples and explanations.

Key Features:

• Use LaTeX's powerful features to produce professionally designed texts
• Install LaTeX; download, set up, and use additional styles, templates, and tools
• Typeset math formulas and scientific expressions to the highest standards
• Include graphics and work with figures and tables
• Benefit from professional fonts and modern PDF features

Book Description:

LaTeX is high-quality Open Source typesetting software that produces professional prints and PDF files. However, as LaTeX is a powerful and complex tool, getting started can be intimidating. There is no official support and certain aspects such as layout modifications can seem rather complicated. It may seem more straightforward to use Word or other WYSIWG programs, but once you've become acquainted, LaTeX's capabilities far outweigh any initial difficulties. This book guides you through these challenges and makes beginning with LaTeX easy. If you are writing Mathematical, Scientific, or Business papers, or have a thesis to write, then this is the perfect book for you.

LaTeX Beginner's Guide offers you a practical introduction to LaTeX with plenty of step-by-step examples. Beginning with the installation and basic usage, you will learn to typeset documents containing tables, figures, formulas, and common book elements like bibliographies, glossaries, and indexes and go on to managing complex documents and using modern PDF features. It's easy to use LaTeX, when you have LaTeX Beginner's Guide to hand.

This practical book will guide you through the essential steps of LaTeX, from installing LaTeX, formatting, and justification to page design. Right from the beginning, you will learn to use macros and styles to maintain a consistent document structure while saving typing work. You will learn to fine-tune text and page layout, create professional looking tables as well as include figures and write complex mathematical formulas. You will see how to generate bibliographies and indexes with ease. Finally you will learn how to manage complex documents and how to benefit from modern PDF features. Detailed information about online resources like software archives, web forums, and online compilers completes this introductory guide. It's easy to use LaTeX, when you have LaTeX Beginner's Guide to hand.

What You Will Learn:

• Install LaTeX and use the TeXworks editor to compile documents
• Design the page layout; create dynamic headers and footers
• Fine-tune appearances and the space of words, symbols, and lines
• Apply intelligent justification and customized hyphenation to achieve fine text design
• Typeset professional-looking tables and create bulleted and enumerated lists
• Write sophisticated math formulas, from in-text expressions to complex multi-line equations with various alignments
• Cross-reference objects such as figures, tables, and equations
• Load fonts and vary their shape and style; choose between thousands of LaTeX symbols from specialized fonts
• Use macros to save time and effort; load packages to extend LaTeX's capabilities
• Generate an index, cite books, and create bibliographies
• Use external pictures, color, PDF bookmarks, and hyperlinks
• Structure and manage large documents by splitting the input
• Manage large documents containing lists, index, and bibliography

Who this book is for:

If you are about to write mathematical or scientific papers, seminar handouts, or even plan to wri

Stefan Kottwitz studied mathematics in Jena and Hamburg. He works as a network and IT security engineer both for Lufthansa Industry Solutions and for Eurowings Aviation. For many years, he has been providing LaTeX support on online forums. He maintains the web forums LaTeX and goLaTeX and the Q&A sites TeXwelt and TeXnique. He runs the TeX graphics gallery sites TeXample, TikZ, and PGFplots, the TeXlive online compiler, the TeXdoc service, and the CTAN software mirror. He is a moderator of the TeX Stack Exchange site and matheplanet. He publishes ideas and news from the TeX world on his blogs LaTeX and TeX. Before this book, he authored the first edition of LaTeX Beginner's Guide in 2011, and LaTeX Cookbook in 2015, both published by Packt.