Lessons learnt from using LaTeX

felix — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:19:45 +0000

It has been a while since I last used LaTeX. And things have moved on. I wanted to write a paper as well as preparing some slides. I also had to include vector graphics and bitmaps as well as source code. So this is what I learnt:

Use pdfLaTeX! It produces PDF straight away and including images in various formats is painless.
Including images:
```
% in the preamble
\usepackage{graphicx}

%wherever you need to include
\includegraphics[width=12cm]{image.png}
```
This supports png and jpg as well as pdf for vector graphics. You might want to use epstopdf to produce
pdf form eps.

Including source code with listings:

\usepackage{listings}
%Setting defaults for formatting
\lstset{
    language=Java,
    basicstyle=\ttfamily\small,
    keywordstyle=\textbf,
    stringstyle=\ttfamily\textbf,
    showstringspaces=false,
    commentstyle=\textsl,
    captionpos=b
}
% And now including code

\begin{lstlisting}
public interface ListDataListener extends EventListener {
    void intervalAdded(ListDataEvent e);
    void intervalRemoved(ListDataEvent e);
    void contentsChanged(ListDataEvent e);
}
\end{lstlisting}

Setting urls:

\usepackage{url}

\url{http://wuetender-junger-mann.de}

Creating slides using the beamer class (beamer being German for projector) to show code
snippets:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{listings}

\title{Weird Presentation}
\author{Felix Leipold}
\date{January 2009}

\begin{document}
   \frame{\titlepage}

      \begin{frame}[containsverbatim]
         \frametitle{Example}
         \begin{lstlisting}
              sourcode.goesHere();
         \end{lstlisting}
      \end{frame}
\end{document}

These days there is good support for using postscript fonts instead of computer modern. The following packages help including them: times, avant, bookman, newcent, palatino, helvet. The are included with \usepackage{packagename}.
When using latex for reporting the longtable package provides
good support for tables spanning multiple pages.
Further reading:
- LaTeX Wikibook
- Manuela Jürgens: LaTeX – Eine Einführung und ein bisschen mehr….
- Manuela Jürgens: LaTeX – Fortgeschrittene Anwendungen.

Opensource Vector Graphics Editor

felix — Fri, 11 May 2007 17:24:15 +0000

Alexey pointed me this week to Inkscape a GTK-based vector graphics editor that from first use seems comparable to CorelDraw (at least the historic version I used years ago). It feels much more intuitive than the Gimp.

wuetender-junger-mann.de » Productivity

Lessons learnt from using LaTeX

Opensource Vector Graphics Editor