I need to start using LaTeX, mainly because I'm tired of

I like TeXMaker, just press F1 and it updates the preview.

sharelatex.com niggaaaaa

>>8596842

Just use overleaf.

>>8596842

I just use auctex in emacs, it takes away a lot of the rough edges I find. Latex is fucking retarded, but all the other alternatives are worse

>>8596849
ya, but when the professor showed us overleaf he kind of made it sound like we were to stupid to install things.

notepad++
-Use any language, markup or otherwise
-Convenient
-Lightweight
-as pretty as you want it to be

also if you're allergic to latex, just use rubber instead.

>>8596871

Why not use a real text editor like vim or emacs?

>>8596874
>Why not use a real text editor like vim or emacs?

This triggers my PTSD from the time I served in /g/.

>>8596845
this

>>8596881

ayy. I guess I just see notepadd++ as a half measure. To each his own I guess

>>8596842
Use atom with latex extensions.
You'll need to download a Tex compiler separately

>>8596874
those are both shit tho

>>8596896
Yeah, but not as shit as literally every single other alternative

>>8596842
If you're on Linux use Gummi it's lightweight and it compiles in real time so it has all the advantages of both word and latex.

my preference is emacs + auctex, but only because i use emacs for coding too. if you're not in compsci, then probably just texmaker or miktex

>>8596842
use LyX. it can be a little ugly, but it's WISWYG unlike all of the vim/emacs trash

>>8596842
Sharelatex or Overleaf

Don't need to install anything (web clients), seamless multi user collaboration, don't need to download any packages.

Unless you have a very strong preference for a local client, definitely check those 2 out

Plaintext text editor, compile on the command line.

>looking at the output as you type
Way to miss the while point of WYSIWYM systems. Writing and typesetting are meant to be two distinct steps.

>>8596939
>unlike all of the vim/emacs trash

yeah, because the choise is "vim/emacs or WYSIWYG", you fucking retard

vim with syntastic and the mklatex shortcutted works amazingly together with something like preview in mac or qpdfviewer/mupdf/... in linux

emacs has a latex thing which i hear is amazing, it works together with pretty much any viewer as well, with many through pipes even

textmate/sublime are also great and can be scripted with mklatex

all of the above have pretty awesome snippets you can freely configure so you don't have to type out all the environments or anything really. ultisnips is your friend in vim, for emacs i'm not sure, textmate ships with awesome snippets, sublime i'm not sure again

then there's of course the standards like TeXStudio, which is alright too and shows your document side by side with the code if you want it to.

LyX is fine if you don't want to deal with LaTeX at all, but the code it generates is fucking ugly and not always up to date with the current versions, so it can get fairly clusterfucky if you have to touch it (which will happen if you give a fuck at all about your document and aren't one of these "hey man i don't give a shit what it looks like as long as it compiles" idiots).

so yeah. pick your poison. vim and emacs certainly have a bit of a steeper learning curve than textmate/sublime, which in turn have a bit of a steeper learning curve than texstudio etc - it all depends on how much you intend to actually use them and whether the power-to-learning-curve ratio is good for you. if you're not sure, go with textmate/sublime, they still let you write code easily without using the useful stuff but if you want to get to the useful stuff, they also have those in store for you.

have fun and don't listen to the idiots.

>>8596975
(i have written thousands of pages of documents using LaTeX and i went from LyX through textmate to vim as i gradually had to write other stuff - C, Java, Python, Ruby, SML, C++, different shells - as well)

nano / vim and a terminal to compile.

I would use vim but I don't want to split sentences across lines and the way vim displays long wrapped lines while you're scrolling is really, really bad in a way that couldn't be fixed the last time I checked.

Don't care to give myself an RSI so I stick with N++.

>>8596842
TeXmaker or Sharelatex. Don't use stuff like Lyx, it usually looks ugly.

>>8596858

You are.

How can you tell apart text that has been written in Word and Latex?

>>8597051
You check the crashlog on the computer that it was written on.

>>8596874
vim is virtual autism
emacs is virtual faggotry

>>8596842
overleaf.com

you can access your documents everywhere where you also have internet

>>8597051
Word's kerning and word spacing is garbage so it's usually pretty obvious.

>>8596944
>>8597069
>keeping your IP on someone else's server.

>>8597051
After reading some documents you'll be able to differentiate the two by instinct, however you can see these elements:
– The font is Computer Modern: if it is then LaTeX was used since it's the standard font and a lot of LaTeX users can't/don't want to change font;
– The math font is Cambria Math: if it is then Word was used for the same reason written above;
– There isn't shitty word spacing with justified text: LaTeX was probably used since it has a complex algorithm just for that;
– There are ligatures: probably LaTeX was used since it always uses ligatures if it's possible, for Word you have to activate them every time;
– There are long tables with a lot of lines: probably Word was used since LaTeX users tend to despise this kind of table and honestly it's a hassle to do them in LaTeX.

how can I learn LATEX?

it is a bit hard to write for me right now

>>8597051
LaTeX usually has a very distinct, uniform appearance, so it's not really so much about recognizing Word documents, but about recognizing LaTex documents. Word documents usually tend to look as good as the people in front of it.

Of course most pretentious self-proclaiming "typography experts" will talk shit about Word, but the truth is, they have no fucking clue about typesetting. Sit someone capable in front of Word and they can create beautiful documents. I'm not saying it's my favorite tool or anything, but claiming that all it's documents are so obviously garbage is just bullshit.

>>8597133
I'm sorry that I can't help too much, but I didn't learn LaTeX from english guides.
In general, try to find a short guide (~200 pages) and read how you can change the type of document, how to write in italics/bold and how to write equations. After that write some documents as practice and search on the guide or on tex.stackexchange what you don't know.
With a little bit of practice you should be able to use LaTeX for basic things without problems, however I strongly suggest you to read fully a guide when you'll have time since you'll learn to do some things more efficiently and you'll be able to write more complex documents.

>>8597125
The first two items are more "how to spot an undergraduate math major's homework assignment".

>>8597196
Bullshit. At least 90% of all publications in my field are set in Computer Modern.

>>8597201
Your field needs to get its shit together.

CMU just looks [math]bad[/math].

>>8597196
Unfortunately that's not true. My statistics and game theory professors used LaTeX for writing their documents and the font was always Computer Modern. I've even found some guides for R written with LaTeX in Computer Modern.
Mind you, changing the font is piss easy since you can just write \usepackage{mathpazo} to use Palatino, but a lot of people can't or don't want to do it.

>>8597203
It does, I agree. Still, only few people in science overall have a lot of interest in fancy looking papers.

>>8597212
>Mind you, changing the font is piss easy since you can just write \usepackage{mathpazo} to use Palatino, but a lot of people can't or don't want to do it.
Yeah, and that's about it as far as standard fonts go. Palatino looks pretty specific, too. I don't particularly like it. If you want anything else, you need to go with different builders like LuaLaTeX or XeLaTeX. And then things usually get ugly and you are for the most part better off with more suitable alternatives (that usually cost money, but whatever).

>>8597229
I've had some modest success at making documents that don't look generic as fuck with XeLaTeX. There are some incompatibilities but they tend to be more that something that works in Xe* doesn't work in other systems, usually if something works in a more base *TeX it'll work in Xe*.

>>8597229
Even XeLaTeX isn't that difficult to use. You can either use a huge amount of fonts with \fontspec{name_of_the_font} or just write \setromanfont{name_of_the_font} and be done with it.

I'm also a bit interested in what the anything else includes. With pdflatex you can use Palatino, Libertine, Fourier, EB-Garamond, Baskerville, Times, Helvetica, Euler, Kunstler Script and so on. I think that for your average LaTeX documents these fonts are more than enough.

>>8597255
>Even XeLaTeX isn't that difficult to use. You can either use a huge amount of fonts with \fontspec{name_of_the_font} or just write \setromanfont{name_of_the_font} and be done with it.
Yes, and then they end up with dozens of inconsistencies. It looks like ass. The most important problem is finding proper math fonts.

>I'm also a bit interested in what the anything else includes. With pdflatex you can use Palatino, Libertine, Fourier, EB-Garamond, Baskerville, Times, Helvetica, Euler, Kunstler Script and so on. I think that for your average LaTeX documents these fonts are more than enough.
Most of those look super ugly. Just amateurish as hell.

>>8597262
> Most of those look super ugly. Just amateurish as hell.
> Garamond is super ugly
Sir, I recognize that either you're baiting me or that you have objectively shit taste and so I wish you a good night and I won't discuss the subject further with you.

>>8596982
>nano
you're joking, i hope

>>8596997
>not splitting at 79/80 characters
mate, do that. it's really, really helpful when reading and editing. vim lets you :vsplit so you have several buffers next to each other in which you can scroll independently and have independent files open.

>>8597125
>"tables are a hassle in latex" meme
>2017
come on, mate.

>>8597244
XeLaTex is the best and most modern LaTeX compiler currently out there

>>8597271
I said "most", not all of them.

>>8597280
> come on, mate.
I can copy the data with Python and all, but for formatting the table with multirow, multicolumn, cmidrule and the table-format of Siunitx you must spend more time with LaTeX than Word. The final result is better than what I would do with Word, but if I need to do a table quickly LaTeX isn't what I would use.

If you have any suggestions for improving the way I do tables you're welcome, it would really make my life easier since a do tables quite often.

>>8597280
>mate, do that. it's really, really helpful when reading and editing. vim lets you :vsplit so you have several buffers next to each other in which you can scroll independently and have independent files open.
you can open the same file more in more than one window???
stop the fucking presses, this definitely isn't something you could ever do before
god i hate the elitist programmer trash and their 70's technology

>>8597301
I have this page in my bookmarks:
http://www.tablesgenerator.com/#
you can generate tables with it in the browser. It has stuff like merging, boarders and stuff like this. Tables in plain latex are nearly impossible without fucking them up.

I really like TexStudio. Just looks really good and has a lot of features

>>8596858
you're stupid if you prefer to waste time when there are many time saving options instead

>>8597315
Thanks. I've tried it a little bit and certainly it's quite comfortable to format tables this way. The only problem that I've found is that the table-format of siunitx isn't present and must be added manually in the code, but I'm already doing it so it isn't really a big problem.

>>8597133

I recommend you to get a template of a latex document and then edit it on your own. Try to write notes from a lecture for example or some reports. Then you'll see how it works. The most important is to know the structure of a latex file and the commands. When there is something you need in the document and you don't know how to do it, google it. Then analyze the code. I learned latex that way and now I write everything in latex because of its convenience

>webshit and closed source suggestions
disgusting

>>8597125
>>8597196
>The math font is Cambria Math: if it is then Word was used for the same reason written above;
>The first two items are more "how to spot an undergraduate math major's homework assignment".
wtf? What's wrong with Cambria Math? That's what I always use and it looks pretty good to me....
I also happen to be an undergrad.

I've been a Word fag all my life. How can I learn LaTeX?

>>8597839
I'm >>8597125. The reason why I wrote that point is because Cambria Math is the standard font for the equations in Word and some people can't change the font or don't want to change it because of laziness so it's quite spread.
Even if Cambria Math is not my cup of tea, I don't really despise it, I just hate some people who use it since as an example they write * instead of [math]\times[/math] and it looks quite bad.

>>8597859

Just use overleaf.
Check the templates and fill in the blanks.
That's it.

And you know, google.
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/11/what-are-good-learning-resources-for-a-latex-beginner/

The authoritative book is More Math into LaTeX.

>>8598373
>since as an example they write * instead of ×× and it looks quite bad
I use word with Cambria and I never do that. You use write "\times" and that's that.

>>8598408
> You use write “\times” and that's that.
For some things yes, that's all. As >>8597143 said you can create nice looking documents with Word if you are skilled, but since a lot of people don't know typography the documents they create aren't nice. LaTeX on the other hand doesn't give too much freedom at first, but it's also more difficult to fuck up the design of the file.

From my point of view the discussion “Do I use Word or LaTeX” depends on what you need to do and how well you can use each program.
I copy official documents for the government for my mother and I use Word/Pages for doing it since I would waste too much time to format the document on LaTeX. On the other hand I use LaTeX for writing the pdf of a Python source code since it's enough to write three lines to do a document of 15 pages or more, if I had to do it on Word I would shoot myself.
The Word vs LaTeX question is a bit like asking “Which tool is better, a hammer or a screwdriver?”, you should use each program for what is best suited.

Lyx is a good way to ease yourself into LaTeX, it's sort of WYSIWYG

>>8598551
as long as you truly are easing yourself in and don't just stop there.

>>8596842
emacs with auctex and i'm not even joking. However if you are a /g/let like me, you will instead use sublime + LaTeXtools. You can write latex in a breeze thanks to snippets (and the more than decent editing capabilities Sublime has) and you get sweet sweet equation preview.

All you'll need to do is install miktex and sumatrapdf on windows.

>>8597357
lmao@ur life
compare the time wasting of
>installing latex distribution and using a good text editor to write fast
vs
>using web browser with essentially notepad + syntax highlight

Yeah you will spend maybe a day installing and configuring shit on your text editor but after that you will go much much faster than in any browser-based app.

-t. tried both ways