Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
What we will be covering this time: “Gummi is a LaTeX editor based on GTK+. The basic features are: - Live preview pane for the compiled document, - BibTeX integration, - Helpers for tables and matrices, - Exporting to PDF, - Error checking, - Syntax highlighting, - Spell Checking, - Document statistics, - Persistent configuration.”
You may ask, “Why another Latex tutorial when there are so many Youtube videos?”
And my answer would be, after watching countless outdated videos that were badly planned and badly executed and gave me no answers, THIS tutorial was born. I am no expert, this is what I wish the tutorials actually taught me.
When it comes to typesetting, LaTeX is the undisputed champ. Boika, Boika… It outweighs its opponents in the sheer number of options alone. At first, LaTeX is a bit confusing and difficult to use. Not to scare you, but I suggest looking here: http://tug.ctan.org/info/symbols/comprehensive/symbols-a4.pdf
Just to break the monotony, I want you to open your Ubuntu software centre and click on productivity. Now find ‘Gummi’ and install it. (don’t worry, it removes cleanly) Gummi is another LaTeX editor, a ‘simpler’ version of TeXstudio if you wish. I don’t want us to be tied to one editor, but learn about other editors too.
Open Gummi
You should see the window below.
Initially, when I started this article it was Gummi v0.6.6, now we are on 0.8.0 and what I wanted to show you is not there any more. Delete and restart. Yes, life goes on and we are now on GTK3. Instead, let us take a quick tour around the interface. If you look above the standard preview pane, you will see more tabs. ‘Build log’, ‘Project’ and ‘bibliography’. Then at the bottom of the editor you will see ‘image’, ‘table’, ‘matrix’ and ‘bibliography’ again. This should bring home how important bibliography is in LaTeX. (see last issue) Again, it is mostly used by scholars, but people have been known to write books in LaTeX and it is a champ for creating PDFs. You may say, so what? I can print my document to PDF in my LibreOffice writer. Well, a PDF isn’t standard. The quality isn’t standard. It’s more of a blanket term, actually it’s a bit of a mess if you ask me. Here is a nice explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7oxZCgO1dY
But that’s not all — as they say on the junk adverts. How about we make something useful, like a CV? Okay, that is waaay too ambitious for a Sunday morning 6 am. Let’s grab a basic one and dissect it. (work from the other end in) Head over to: http://www.latextemplates.com/ and grab a CV template. In case the one I grab is gone or replaced, grab any one, it does not matter, you can learn from them all, I bet you! I just grabbed the second one, as it was the shortest and simplest. You will notice that there is a .tex file and a .cls file. The latter contains all the formatting information.
Something we have not discussed is the use of comments. The percent symbol will start a comment line. By this, I mean that everything after the ‘%’ will be treated as a comment. I know you will ‘get’ this on the first go:
% % This template has been downloaded from: % http://www.LaTeXTemplates.com %
This is simply for us, - the users - and will be ignored by the compiler. So any time you feel the need to add something you want to remember or bring attention to the person looking at your document code, add a %-symbol to the start of the line.
Another thing to point out, is the hrule -horizontal ruler, the line across the page. \moveleft\hoffset\vbox{\hrule width\resume width height 1pt}\smallskip % Horizontal line after name; adjust line thickness by changing the '1pt'
So why not go ahead and change some values on fonts and the like and see how it affects our document on the right? Play! We learn best when playing. Just pay attention to anything that you do not know … YET!
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use these two new items in your homework, namely adding them to your last project in some way. I won’t tell you how, that is for you to figure out, but it will not be difficult.
If any of you want us to create a CV from scratch, let us know at the usual e-mail address. Next issue we will deal with mathematics. By that, I mean how to get them on the paper and how to space the symbols and equations. If your eyes gloss over at the mention of this, that is fine, still come read it as you may learn something that helps you in another area.
As you can see, the editor does not make such a huge difference, if you prefer one or the other, that is fine too. Just join in the fun and one day when you write your book free of charge on free software, just send me an evaluation copy to read, I do so like reading.