LaTeX Thread
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I'm considering learning latex as a humanities student in order to write my thesis
is it worth the effort? also can you recommend me any good latex editor for mac?
thanks /g/uys
>>51789957
Post tits
>>51789991
sorry man, I doubt you want to see my mantits
>>51789991
Now fuck you.
>>51789957
Running LaTeX is always a good choice and worth the, little, effort. Before starting be sure your school don't or do uses a norm (like APA, or ABNT) as there are packages for them that simplify a lot your life.
As the editor, I really don't care, I've been using vim with LaTeX since I was 14 years old. Just use XeTeX for advanced font support.
>>51790137
thanks!
I downloaded MacTeX,I apparently is the most recommended.
How's the learning curve? is it really such a "little" effort?
>>51790223
It's not that bad, actually. My brother used it for his bachelor's thesis in lit. studies, and was happy with how it turned out. He learned it on his own in just a few weeks, and he has no training in tech subjects at all.
>>51790223
It's not a learning curve but a learning wall. Once you jumped over it's like free sex.
>>51790137
You have shit taste, faggot
>>51789957
I went to a college where every single student had to do a senior thesis. I did mine in LaTeX, as I was a mathematics major. I noticed that the humanities students did their's in MS Word, and so I asked a few humanities professors who confirmed it, and it was horrible.
Please learn LaTeX, You'll be glad that you did. It has features for stuff like automatic Table of Contents, and List of Figures, as well as automatically labelling the page numbers for those, so you don't have to manually change them every single time you edit a chapter.
On a Mac, you have to download MacTeX. It comes with a default TeX editor called TeXshop and TeXedit. Both are garbage. I prefer TeXStudio. In fact, what I normally do is edit my TeX file in Sublime, then use TeXstudio to compile.
Learning LaTeX is not that hard. I think the hardest part is starting, since there's so much stuff to learn. Once you learn the beginning stuff, you can start making files pretty easily.
>>51790223
>How's the learning curve?
pic related
>is it really such a "little" effort?
It is if you use a template, preferably one supplied by your own university.
Googling how to do something like "insert a table" is as easy in both LaTeX or Word.
>>51790369
forgot the pic
>>51789957
If your thesis will be in English, yeah, the basic formatting is not that difficult and it looks more professional than M$ Word.
If your thesis will be using any other language, especially one heavy on accented letters and other special charactes, avoid it if at all possible.
Couple pages ofTato bakal{\' a}{\v r}sk{\' a} pr{\' a}ce se zam{\v e}{\v r}uje na u{\v z}ivatelsk{\' e} rozhran{\' i}
will drive you up the fucking wall even with macro replace
So what's the best place to start?
TeX for dummies? Youtube tutorials?
>>51790463
>So what's the best place to start?
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
you have a pdf version on that site if you prefer
>>51790445
That's a lie. I haven't needed to do that since 2005.
>>51790489
can you link the pdf?
>>51790223
see >>51790293
>>51790396
pstricks? if so 11/10
>>51790445
there are plenty of packages for that. I write everything in german with accented letters and especially other special characters.
>>51790463
Yeah use the wiki >>51790489
Also, open up some samples that come with the editor of your choice and play a little around. It will be easy for you if you can code a little, because it's somehow related.
>>51790541
>https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/LaTeX.pdf
>>51789957
'Anon, can you send your thesis in .doc please, I cant make any annotations in pdf'
- my professor who went to university for over 12 years
While I would highly recommend LaTeX (actually, you want to use pdfLuaTeX or XeLaTeX), you need to look at the citation/literature things that you have to do. While just about anything is possible in LaTeX/BibLaTeX, you should sort that out early.
>>51790396
Theoretically, Microsoft Word can do pretty much anything that LaTeX can do, except for when it comes to graphical text-macro tricks like LaTeX does with TiKz.
Basically, Word can do anything LaTeX can do that happens to be worth actually doing.
>>51790753
Except handling a 10 year old 600 page document, being FOSS, working well with a sensible versioning system like svn or git, having a decent native literature handling. But lemme guess: all not worth doing.
>>51790853
Word 2016 handles all the versioning stuff for you with collaborative document writing.
What the fuck is "native literature"?
>>51790971
And it does that across Mac/Windows/Linux, as we use it in my workplace? Impressive. How about merging? That's automatic (truth be told, that is git or svn. But the difference of ascii vs. binary is on the order of the world.).
Read as (native) (literature handling).
>>51791023
>Merging
I'd have to buy a copy and test it out, but I assume they're not as short sighted as to realize that some people are going to collaborate offline.
They definitely have the framework for merging down since at least before 2013, because it can track changes made by users.
>>51789957
>>51790223
>humanities
>Mac
Kill yourself back to Reddit, idiot.
>humanities student
>mac
>latex
That bait is so obvious it hurts.
>>51790445\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
>>51791090
What is the status of bibtex? Is there a UTF implementation?
>>51791111
I don't actually know. I just use MikTex and it just werks.
>>51791090
forget about utf8, the correct way to do this is\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
>>51791090
>not using fontspec
>>51791147
>>51791151
What's the difference?
>>51791190
Basically a better unicode and font support (ligatures, old style numbers, etc) (you have to use XeTeX or LuaTex with fontspec tough).
>>51790445
Dude have you heard of something called utf-8 input encoding?
>>51789957
OP listen to my advice. I struggled learning Latex. I would suggest you to please download and use LYX. It is a front end GUI for latex. You can use it like MS word and the compiler does all the coding shit and gives you a latex output.
>>51790367
>Please learn LaTeX, You'll be glad that you did. It has features for stuff like automatic Table of Contents, and List of Figures, as well as automatically labelling the page numbers for those, so you don't have to manually change them every single time you edit a chapter.
Wut. Microsoft Word does all of this...
>>51792514
Except M$ Word and it's clones do that on a very poor and unpleasant way.
>>51789957
>humanities
Nothing's worth your effort, neither LaTeX, OO, Libre or MSO will save you from selling french fries to people with actual degrees.
Just get MathCad tbqh
>>51789957
Humanities, it is worth it if you are doing analytical philosophy or if you include some math, logic tables or something. Latex have excellent system for references, illustrations, diagrams, figures and tables. It's a steep learning wall, when you have figured out how to start it should be fine. Search "how to write a thesis in latex" for tutorials. You get lots of stuff automatically with latex
>>51792481
Better to learn the code, or else the lack of customization will be infuriating
>>51789957
Its easy as shit op you l*zy cunt [spoiler]Its actually not but close enough[/spoiler]
>>51792481
>I struggled learning Latex.
Are you some kind of retard? It's not hard to use. Just steal a template from somewhere and google anything you don't know how to do.
