The Help Archive

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Introduction

This is Andreas' little pet project. LaTeX is the system for creating documents on UNIX, and it has some advantages over software like Word for Windows that are convincing (to some).  Personally, I don't see any reason to use Word, but at least for things like your thesis, you may save a few grey cells using LaTeX. Many people say it's the other way around - try it yourself.

LaTeX Documentation

So, for all those poor souls who are forced or determined to use LaTeX, these documents provide help in all situations. I have a few basic documents in PS or PDF that introduce LaTeX, as well as some sophisticated documentation on problems that people often have with LaTeX. This LaTeX help page from Cambridge, England is probably a very quick way to get some help, otherwise try one of the following documents. Most of these are in PostScript, so you need to view them in Ghostview (ghostview on Unix, gsview32on Windows).

• latexguide.ps  A WPI specific help file. This is NOT an introduction, but rather provides some help in difficult cases (problems that people had over the last year, mostly dealing with graphics in LaTeX). Look at this if you need to include a Powerpoint slide into a LaTeX document or if you want to place two figures next to each other.
• If you are completely new to LaTeX, this Introduction gives you a crash course and should suffice for the first attempts at LaTeX. It is adapted to the latest LaTeX version 2e.
• If you know some LaTeX already but don't know all the commands or their usage (or keep forgetting them, like me), you should have a look at "LaTeX in 87 Minutes". This exists also as a PDF-Version which is really easy to browse using acroread on Unix or Acrobat Reader on Windows. It will help in most or all cases that do not require specific LaTeX extensions, and it probably saves you buying a LaTeX book. This introduction does not only take 87 minutes, it also has 87 pages, so please don't print it (at least not single-sided full-size).

LaTeX Tips and Tricks

• Sophisticated graphical "programming", such as rotating pictures with their captions, rotating text, customizing captions, figures, etc. on 86 pages. Many of the tips and tricks in that document are included in latexguide.ps.
• Tables in LaTeX are restricted to one page. The supertabular-package removes this limitation and is documented here.
• The AMS (American Mathematical Society) provides a number of classes and packages for math-heavy documents. For example, there are a number of fonts that are normally installed in any LaTeX distribution. A documentation is available from the CS-GSO homepage.

LaTeX Templates for special purposes

We also have some .tex-templates that help you to start with a

• paper (article), a
• letter and a
• thesis. Exciting news: this is an all new version, now compliant to the library's requirements, I think. From there, writing your thesis is only a small step :)

You may have to click on these links with the right mouse-button to be able to save the files.

Advanced LaTeX

• Bibliographies are well supported in LaTeX. A documentation of the different forms of bibliography entries plus some general information is available. We offer a small sample BIB-file for download to get you started. Check biblio.tex for an example how to use bibliographies. Compile this file with the following sequence: latex biblio; bibtex biblio; latex biblio; latex biblio If you use emacs to write documents, a BIBTeX style is supported and you can easily add, edit, check, and sort entries.
• The CS-GSO conducted a LaTeX-tutorial on February 8, 2000. The handout given at this tutorial is available from this page as a PostScript file. The source code is also available, if you want to see some of the more advanced programming.
• Extending LaTeX is possible with external packages, fonts, styles, etc. A comprehensive archive of available material is available from the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network.

Converting Mircosoft-Generated Figures to EPS

This process may be necessary if You have created a figure in a Microsoft product for usage in a LaTeX-written paper. In this case, you have to convert the figure to EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) which no Microsoft product is able to do. We have two versions for this, the first being our old CSGSO version, the second (using StarOffice which is available on CS machines) contributed by Prof. Mark Claypool.

• Converting Windows-graphics to EPS in order to include them in a LaTeX document. This is not a trivial pursuit since no Microsoft-product supports the (open) PostScript standard. The easiest way of converting any Windows-generated vector graphic (such as Powerpoint/MS Draw pictures) is converting them through Corel Draw which has excellent EPS-export (and import!!!) filters. Of course, the best solution is to draw your figures in Corel Draw in the first place. If this software is not available WMF2EPS is a shareware Windows-software that can convert Windows-Metafile to clean EPS. It requires a PC with a PostScript printer driver (there are several on the Windows CD-ROMs) and GSView installed. Its use is a bit awkward, but it's a great and cheap way to convert vector graphics files to EPS. Download from here.
• Instructions for converting MS figures to eps for Latex:
  
  1. Open MS doc with Star Office
  2. select figure to convert
  3. Edit->Copy (or Ctrl-C) to copy
  4. File->New->Drawing to open up Star Draw - Edit->Paste (or Ctrl-V) to paste
  5. File->Export
  6. Select "EPS - Encapulated Postscript" in the "File type" box.
  7. Choose filename. Click "Save".
  8. In next window, make sure to choose "Previews: no Preview" and "Compression: None" or the next step will fail. Other options can vary, but typically "Version: Level 2" and "Color format: greyscale" are what you want. Click ok.
  9. run "ps2epsi" on the created file.
  10. Voila! Put the newly made file into your favorite LaTex doc.

Note, works great with Word. Works ok with Powerpoint but is limited by Star Office support for native Powerpoint docs.

Creating PDF-Files with LaTeX

Even though PS-Files are the most widely used output format for LaTeX, some publishers (and the WPI library) require Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). Creating PDF from a LaTeX document is very simple.

Just produce a PS-File as you normally would (with dvips) and then run ps2pdf filename.ps from any CS-machine. However, this typically creates files that are very large and look bad in Acrobat Reader since they contain bitmap fonts ( more on that at the CCC Website).

The most simple workaround is to use the times-package (add \usepackage{times}) to your main TeX-File. However, this will use the familiar Times Roman/arial/Courier-font set, so your documents will look like Micro$oft-Word-Documents (well, not as horribly formatted, but the fonts will resemble your garden-variety Word-document). If you don't like that, you have to do a little more work on the fonts.

Finally, after you have a file with Postscript-fonts in it, the best way to convert it to PDF is using Acrobat Distiller which is available in the CCC and hopefully soon in the department, too. This will produce excellent results and near-perfect PDF-files. Try that with Word :)

Have fun.

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Last modified by CS-GSO, Sunday, 27-Nov-2005 09:07:32 EST