Discuss your favourite typesetting systems, markup languages, document editors, tools, ask questions, and help beginners getting started.
Some popular typesetting systems and markup languages:
- AsciiDoc
- LaTeX
- Markdown
- TeX
- troff
I'll start. I use LaTeX, primarily for writing all kinds of reports and preferably but not exclusively using Vim. Here's an excerpt from my ~/.vimrc to compile LaTeX documents using Vim and Rubber (e.g. apt-get install rubber).syntax enable
set number
set autochdir
au BufRead *.tex setlocal spell spelllang=en_gb
au BufWritePost *.tex !rubber --clean main.tex && rubber --pdf --warn=all main.tex
The last line automatically compiles a LaTeX PDF when you write/save a '*.tex' document. Useful to compile just your 'main.tex' document, which includes all your separate *.tex documents. It's more scalable this way, but it demands you consistently create a 'main.tex' named document with all your includes.
Some more user friendly LaTeX GUI editors:
- Texmaker
- TeXstudio
- LaTeXila
>>53717468
latex is nice; I use texlive to compile latex to pdf for all my classes
no, I can't turn in DVI, nobody knows how to open it
How's rubber? I've always just used latex-mk
I-is it bad if I just use sharelatex to write my papers?
I got really fed up with the giant latex install and afterwards still nothing would work because paths are wrong and you need like 500 compile flags to compile some basic themes
>>53717550
>I-is it bad if I just use sharelatex to write my papers?
Yes
LaTeX (texlive) + GNU Emacs. It literally cannot get any better.
I am more interested in some good fonts. Currently, I use predominantly the TeX Gyre suite of six or so typefaces, as they integrate very well in LaTeX. I also some times use Fourier. Any other nice high quality free font families?
>>53717550
>I-is it bad if I just use sharelatex to write my papers?
If it works for you, sure.
>>53717650
What's the point of using latex if you aren't going to use Computer Modern?
>>53717517
It's really easy and I prefer it over manual make files I used to create. It's also aware of BibTex and such, and makes sure to compile your TeX documents as many times as needed for everything to be included.
Perhaps latex-mk does this as well, but I've never it. How's latex-mk?
>>53717686
Computer Modern is genuinely one of the most hideous typefaces. Ugly and illegible.
