LaTeX : A HIGH-QUALITY TYPESETTING SYSTEM

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^{±12 minutes required to read this course material}

^{UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, RESEARCHERS, ENGINEERS & WORKING PROFESSIONALS}

INTRODUCTION

LaTeX is based on the idea that it is better to leave document design to document designers, and to let authors get on with writing documents.

When there is a book, a paper, or document; scientific or technical or even a standard operating procedure (SOP) document to write, the versatility of LaTeX is very attractive. Plus it is a free open-source software with a large and active scientists, researchers and academia community. 

WHO SHOULD ATTEND 

This training is specifically tailored to suit:

1. Undergraduate & postgraduate university/college students who wants to write professional-styled assignments and dissertation.
2. Working professionals who is from R&D, industry, and academia requirements with examples suited towards research, academia and the industry.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

1. Download, install, set up, and use additional styles, templates, and tools powerful features to produce professionally designed texts.
2. Typeset math formulas and scientific expressions with the highest standards along with inserting graphic images; and working with figures and tables.
3. Use professional fonts along with modern PDF features. 

A QUICK SUMMARY OF LaTeX  FEATURES 

1. Typesetting journal articles, technical reports, books, and slide presentations.             
2. Control over large documents containing sectioning, cross-references, tables and figures. 
3. Typesetting of complex mathematical formulas.
4. Advanced typesetting of mathematics with AMS-LaTeX.
5. Automatic generation of bibliographies and indexes.
6. Multi-lingual typesetting.
7. Inclusion of artwork, and process or spot colour.
8. Using PostScript or Metafont fonts.  

Course Information                       Trainer:  Dr. Harjinthar Singh Session:  1 day Duration: 7.5 hours Level: Starter Prerequisite                                    Should have basic knowledge of word-processing apps (Ms. Word, Pages, Google Docs)  or any text editors at the least. Additional Note                              Participants are required to bring their own personal laptops (running Windows OS, UBUNTU or Mac OS) for hands-on training. Venue                                               In-house. Number of  Participants                Minimum:  5  Maximum: 15  Fees                                                 RM  600 per participant (HRDF claimable)

Definition by latex.org A document preparation system LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system; it includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation. LaTeX is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents. LaTeX is available as free software. Is not a word processor! Instead, LaTeX encourages authors not to worry too much about the appearance of their documents but to concentrate on getting the right content. What is LaTeX actually?  Is it just another program/app? LaTeX is not a program by itself; it is a language. Using LaTeX requires a bunch of tools. Acquiring them manually would result in downloading and installing multiple programs in order to have a suitable computer system that can be used to create LaTeX output, such as PDFs. TeX Distributions help the user in this way, in that it is a single step installation process that provides (almost) everything.  Recommended distributions for each of the major operating systems are: ·         TeX Live is a major TeX distribution for *BSD, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. ·         MiKTeX is a Windows-specific distribution. ·         MacTeX is a Mac OS-specific distribution based on TeX Live. Finally, there are also online LaTeX editors if you don’t want to install a dedicated stand-alone set of tools in your computer.

 

1. Getting Started with LaTeX  . What is Latex? Installing on Ubuntu, Windows & Mac OS. Your first Latex document 2. Formatting Words, Lines and Paragraphs Latex Commands Comment Spacing & Line Break Special Characters Font New Command & Macros Centering Text & Quotes 3. Design Pages                        . Book Class Specifying Margin Paper Sizes Two Column Class Table of Content Page Break Footnote 4. Creating Lists                        . List & Nested List Numbered List Definition List 5. Create Tables, Insert              Pictures Tabs Table Horizontal Lines Merging Cells Including a Picture Floating a Figure

6. Cross Referencing                 . Referencing Items Page Reference Clever Reference 7. Listing Content and                 References Table of Content Adjusting the depth of TOC Adding Entries Manually List of Figures/Tables Building the Index Creating a Bibliography Using natbib 8. Typesetting Math Formulas  . Math Formulas Embedding Math within Text Numbering Equations Subscripts and Superscripts Greek & Script Letters Producing Ellipsis Math Fonts & Style Handle System of Equations Operators Math Symbols Inequality Relations Subset and Superset Symbols Variable Sized Operators 9. Lines & Images                     . Over lining & Underlining Setting Accents Including an Image (Figure) Floating a Figure

CASE-EXAMPLE : Wasted time, badly designed documents and non-standards across an organisation;  and how laTeX can solve these issues

1. Say, you need to type an article with 

1. a title  (let’s say your title is “Apidea family movement pattern in flight as a train system scheduling framework for Malaysia’s MRT, LRT, Monorail and KTM Komuter with Route Master techniques”)
2. author’s name  (and the name is “Jane Doe”)
3. Date  (6 September 2006)
4. and followed by the words  (“Hello world!”)

 in most typesetting or word-processing systems, the author decides what layout to use, select (say) 18pt Times Roman font for the title, 12pt Times Italic for the name, alignments, margins and so on. This has two outcomes: 

1. authors wasting their time with designs; 
2. and a lot of badly designed documents!

2. So, in LaTeX you will write this document in any text editor as

% My first LaTeX document

\documentclass[{article}

\title{Apidea family movement pattern in flight as a train system scheduling framework for Malaysia’s MRT, LRT, Monorail and KTM Komuter with Route Master techniques}

\author{Jane Doe}

\date{6 September 2006}

\begin{document}

   Hello world!

\end{document}

3. Or in plain English, you are  telling  LaTeX

1. The first line is a remark u can put in your document , just like programming languages.
2. Second line is saying, this document is an article. (telling the LaTeX program which document class will be used)
3. The title of the article (you can re-use this title anywhere else in the article just by calling ‘\title’) 
4. Its author is Jane Doe.
5. It was written on 6 September 2006.
6. Then, we tell LaTeX, we are starting the document  with ‘begin’
7. And after writing the rest, the document will now consists of a title followed by the text Hello world!

4. Finally, LaTeX will give you the below document

Note that it even decides spacing between lines and sections of the article document