LaTeX

Overview

LaTeX is a great way to write documents, and is required for use in all your documents to be submitted for this course. LaTeX is better than basic text editors such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs due to the following points, adapted from this stack exchange question:

Dealing with mathematical notation.

Layout and entry are generally easier using LaTeX than some other sort of equation editor. Online tools such as Detexify make it very simple to find the symbol you need.

Consistent handling of intra-document references and bibliography.

As of a couple of years ago the major editors still had problems with re-numbering cross-references and bibliography items. This is never a problem with BibTeX or LaTeX.

Separation of content and style.

In principle this means that you can write your document without caring how it is formatted, and at the end of the day wrap it in the style-file provided by the journal publisher before submission to conform to the house style. In practice some of the journal publishers demand special formatting commands that partially moots this process. Furthermore recent versions of Word and LibreOffice Writer, when properly used, should be able to keep track of various levels of section heading separate from the body text, and apply uniform styling to each level. The gap is somewhat closing.

Tables and illustrations.

With online tools such as Tables Generator, creating tables in LaTeX is as simple as copy-pasting data from excel. Images can be inserted exactly where you specify them without worrying about justification or overlay.

There are a few difficulties with LaTeX. These include:

1. Difficulties with collaborative editing (consider the convenience of Google Docs)
2. Spell check (Microsoft Word has a much more advanced spell and grammar check)
3. Ease of use (LaTeX is technically a “document preparation system” as opposed to a text editor)

However, many if not all of these issues are mitigated by the use of an online tool known as Overleaf. Overleaf provides you with templates, the ability to collaborate, and (thankfully), a spell check function. It runs in browser and doesn’t require any installation.

If you would like to run an offline version, there are various options, but Visual Studio Code with the Latex Workshop Plugin is suggested. For more details on Setting this up, see Visual Studio Code.

Useful LaTeX Tools

Overleaf

Overleaf is an online collaborative Latex editor. It is recommended you use Overleaf, as it has plenty templates which you can draw from and doesn't require any installation or package management.

Using Overleaf

Once you have created an account on Overleaf, you need a template to work from. See below for a list of templates.

• In Overleaf, click “New Project” and select “Upload Project”
• Select or drag the report template zip file you downloaded from Vula
• The template will load and you will be able to edit it.
• Note: you will need to change the “Main document” in the Menu when editing your document to be “Report.tex”
• Note: You will not be able to compile the source into a pdf if you are viewing Preamble.tex

Detexify

Detexify is a web app you can use to find Latex codes for specific symbols.

Tablesgenerator

Tablesgnerator is a website for easily creating Latex tables. You can copy-paste tables from other applications such as Excel.

Citation Machine

Citation machine can be used to easily generate BibTex.

Templates

Templates are a good way to get started with a LaTeX project. You should not be creating templates from scratch. Overleaf has a selection of templates, but these are ones found useful in the department. You may still need to add and adjust preamble contents for packages, changes in style, etc.

Templates

The IEEE Conference Template 

File:IEEE Conference Template.zip

An example large template report, useful for final year projects and as a starting point for other write ups

File:Large Template.zip

There are two cover pages here, one for a general report, another for a formal dissertation hand in.