October 29, 2012

Getting started with LaTeX – a collection of resources

By tom

There are many great LaTeX tutorials available online. Therefore, I will not write another guide on how to get started with LaTeX. This post is a collection of links to resources I think provide a good starting point, getting you going with reasonable effort. Everything else will come with time…

LaTeX and the community

Getting started on TeX User Group website
The LaTeX project has general information and news on LaTeX
The TeX community aggregator on TeXample, a collection of feeds related to TeX and LaTeX.

Tutorials

The not so short introduction to LaTeX
Andrew Roberts has a few well written tutorials on his website.
LaTeX tutorials – a primer by the Indian TeX User Group.
Wikibooks LaTeX pages is a great resource with code samples.
The UK TeX FAQ

Other resources

Ask Google
Many questions you may have were asked and most probably answered on tex.SX.
LaTeX cheat sheet by Winston Chang
You will find posts on many topics on my blog as well as help on installing LaTeX and code samples.

Online editors

If I forgot to mention an important resource or in case you have a question, let me know below.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2012 at 7:02 am and tagged with community, getting started, guide, LaTeX, resources, tug, tutorial and posted in Introduction, LaTeX. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

16 Responses to “Getting started with LaTeX – a collection of resources”

Amit
October 29th, 2012 at 7:03 am

http://texblog.org/

Reply
Simon Drew
October 29th, 2012 at 8:56 am

Thanks Tom,

I’m grateful for the hints and tutorials you provide -always well-written and informative.

I would be interested in hearing your views as an expert: since LaTeX is so good at certain typographical tasks that it almost defines the expected standard layout, are there any areas that in your opinion are best left to a word processor? In other words, when do you find working with LaTeX becomes a pain in the neck?

Reply
- tom
  October 31st, 2012 at 2:52 am
  
  Hi Simon,
  
  Thanks for your question. I would say it largely depends on your level and the amount of time and effort you have or are willing to invest. There are many topics which I am not familiar with. For example, I have only just started to learn TikZ and it takes me quite some time to come up with something reasonably nice. Also, I experienced problems with templates from certain journals. The problem there is that you can’t really change them and sometimes it may be easier to just use a word processor. I use LaTeX whenever possible and when I get stuck, I almost always find a solution somewhere on the internet.
  
  Best, Tom.
  
  Reply
Michael
October 29th, 2012 at 4:58 pm

http://detexify.kirelabs.org/ – helps you find the LaTeX-Code for a symbol (kind of an interactive version of the comprehensive symbol list).

Reply
- tom
  October 30th, 2012 at 2:47 am
  
  Thanks for the link! Best, Tom.
  
  Reply
Juan Luis Varona
October 30th, 2012 at 4:45 am

Another editor on-line:
http://writelatex.com/

Reply
- tom
  October 30th, 2012 at 4:55 am
  
  Thanks for the link, will add it to the list.
  
  Tom.
  
  Reply
Arjen Bax
October 30th, 2012 at 10:17 am

The UK TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html

Reply
- tom
  October 30th, 2012 at 2:02 pm
  
  Added, thanks!
  
  Reply
Joshua Gross
October 31st, 2012 at 4:55 am

Thanks for the shout-out to SpanDeX, Tom!

In response to the above comment, I should also note that SpanDeX has some built in resources – for example, everything on the UK TeX FAQ and the NASA LaTeX FAQ are searchable from within SpanDeX, and we also have some homegrown help resources.

Keep on rockin’!

Josh

Reply
- tom
  November 9th, 2012 at 3:41 am
  
  Josh, thanks for your comment! I will check out the latest SpanDeX updates soon! Keep up the good work! Tom.
  
  Reply
Getting started with latex « ecology & stats
October 31st, 2012 at 7:37 pm

[...] love . But few people in my field use it. Here’s a recent effect to point people to useful resources with which to get [...]

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Vel
November 5th, 2012 at 10:02 pm

Might I suggest http://www.latextemplates.com as resource for a wide diversity of LaTeX templates. The site doesn’t teach how to use LaTeX but I’ve made it so it appeals to people like me who learn by tinkering by heavily commenting all templates.

Reply
- tom
  November 9th, 2012 at 7:46 am
  
  An interesting resource, thanks for the link. I hope the number of templates in each category will grow over time.
  
  Reply
Tom Walton
January 2nd, 2013 at 7:40 pm

Hi Tom – a nice concise list with some good quality links, thanks

Have you seen the recent updates at http://www.writelatex.com – they’ve added new examples, and seem to have increased the speed of the preview rendering, so it’s become really handy for preparing presentations. It’s what I’ve started using for collaborating online with colleagues.

All the best,
Tom (W)

Reply
- tom
  January 8th, 2013 at 11:22 am
  
  Thanks for the update, I will check it out! Best, Tom.
  
  Reply