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Where Can I find Sources for Learning LaTex?
the_2nd_coming asks: "I am currently in college and I am majoring in math and computer science. Writing papers in Word and OpenOffice, while not a pain, is slow work due to formating. I have learned that LaTex is used for writing Math and Science papers a lot and once learned makes writing papers quick. I have found few good comprehensive resources on the web, and few books in the book stores. I was amazed that O'Reilly did not even have a book on it. What good sources are there that can teach me LaTex for Mathematics and BibTex?"
LaTeX is the standard for science and particularly mathematics papers. If the_second_coming is really serious about a career in such, learning LaTeX sooner rather than later will serve them well. Of course, a search on Amazon would have saved a lot of banter on slashdot, but what do you want? Editors who actually filter things?
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The way I learned the most about LaTeX was by looking at the sources of all of the documents that came with it. Look at the AMS documents, for example. You can find all kinds of LaTeX source documents on the web as well.
Then start creating your own documents, and trying out things. Search on google or groups.google if you are getting errors---someone else has run into them before you.
Good luck!
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If you think it's slow using a word-processor, Latex will make you feel like you have a clone who's only job is to figure stuff out while the rest of the world continues getting work done, oh, and you're the clone who doesn't get anything done while you figure Latex out.
No, really...Latex has many advantages. If you are happy to let it pick all your formatting settings, then speed is one of them. Otherwise, if you need things formatted a certain way, it's a HUGE time-sink. I personally like more control, so I find myself spending the vast majority of my time finding out how to format things MY way and often I forget loads of cryptic codes, so I find myself having to look up stuff again and again.
Use styles in a word processor...then as you write, just select which style you want to be using currently. It's faster, safer and much much cheaper.
It (more or less) works if you want to add one or two equetions on a text.
Now go write a math text, or any other math/tech-related text with lots of expressions, and have a glimpse of how hell can be.
Lyx is rather good. However, since almost all comments at this moment seem to point in Lyx' direction I want to give a bit of counterargument.
Lyx is not very easy to use in conjunction with plain source editting. It uses its own tags and seems to handle some things slightly different than you would do yourself. In this sense you can compare it to Dreamweaver for HTML. When only using dreamweaver it is sort of OK, but if you want hybrid editing and use more advanced things (only style sheet layout for example), the WYSIWYG becomes more and more frustating as it edits your carefully crafted source.
Espacially if you use a lot of custom commands and advanced positioning system, lyx is NOT the way to go. I use rather advanced and hacked sty files for letters, advanced reports and PDF-presentations and lyx cannot deal with these files properly.
So stuck with lyx only if your needs are not to advanced and you have no interest in editting the source by yourself.
On a side note, the best way to learn latex is read the sty and cls files, which often come bundled with your tex distribution. I learned a lot from them (also how NOT to do it..). For example the Seminar files and examples contain a lot of interesting material.
This, again, is beyond the basics, but they are to easy... (\begin{bla} \end{bla} is al you need, where bla is section, enumerate etc. (all logical keywords, only the manual is needed)).
Well put. There are some gotchas which can make your layout funky (empty newlines in a big math contex eg) but those are few and far between. If you are trying to make LaTeX look like something it's not then most likely you are trying to make it look "wrong". That's my experience at any rate.
And since it's a text document you can do a load of magic with it, just as you mention. Take a large document and break it into pieces and you can work on it concurrently. (Try that in any Word version or clone.) You can even put in in a version control system.
If you are doing things like API descriptions you can let scripts extract information from your source code and have an instantly updated API document each time you compile the project.
Really, LaTeX is a real killer when you are just "getting the work done". If you are doing layout for a paper it may not help you much. That's note really what it's for though.
Let me second the above comment: take something you've written in another application, and LaTeX it. Play with packages, figure out what you need to do. It's the best way to learn, and you can make things work the way you want them to. Learning the internals will be the best thing you can do---LyX is cool and all, but nothing beats knowing how to do it without WYSIWYG. The links already given here are great. LaTeX rocks; enjoy it! brwski
brwski
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