What this book covers
Chapter 1, Getting Started with LaTeX, introduces LaTeX and explains its benefits. It guides you through the download and installation of a comprehensive LaTeX distribution and shows you how to create your first LaTeX document. It also introduces the use of the online LaTeX software Overleaf. Furthermore, you will get familiar with accessing package documentation.
Chapter 2, Formatting Text and Creating Macros, explains how to vary font, shape, and text styles. It deals with centering and justification of paragraphs, and how we can improve line breaks and hyphenation. It introduces logical formatting and describes how to define macros and how to use environments and packages.
Chapter 3, Designing Pages, shows how you can adjust the margins and change the line spacing. It demonstrates portrait, landscape, and two-column layouts. In this chapter, we will create dynamic headers and footers, learn how to control page breaks, and use footnotes. Along the way, you will also learn about redefining existing commands and using class options.
Chapter 4, Creating Lists, deals with arranging text in bulleted, numbered, and definition lists. You will learn how to choose bullets and numbering styles and how to design the overall layout of lists.
Chapter 5, Creating Tables, shows you how to create professional-looking tables and goes deep into formatting details.
Chapter 6, Including Images, shows you how to include external pictures with captions in your documents. You will learn how to benefit from LaTeX’s automated figure placement and how to fine-tune it.
Chapter 7, Using Cross-References, introduces intelligent referencing to sections, footnotes, tables, figures, and numbered environments in general.
Chapter 8, Listing Contents and References, deals with creating and customizing a table of contents and lists of figures and tables. Furthermore, it explains how to cite books, create bibliographies, and generate an index.
Chapter 9, Writing Math Formulas, explains mathematical typesetting in depth. It starts with basic formulas and continues with centered and numbered equations. It shows how to align multi-line equations. In detail, it shows how to typeset math symbols such as roots, arrows, Greek letters, and operators. Moreover, you will learn to build complex math structures such as fractions, stacked expressions, and matrices.
Chapter 10, Using Fonts, takes us into the world of fonts and demonstrates various fonts, including Roman, sans-serif, and typewriter fonts, in different shapes.
Chapter 11, Developing Large Documents, helps in managing large documents by splitting them into several files. After reading this chapter, you will be able to create complex projects building upon sub-files. Furthermore, we deal with front matter and back matter with different page numbering and separate title pages. Working through an example book, you’ll also get familiar with templates, preparing you to write your own thesis, book, or report.
Chapter 12, Using Hyperlinks and Designing Headings, brings color into your documents. It shows you how to modify headings of chapters and all kinds of sections. We will learn how to create feature-rich PDF documents with bookmarks, hyperlinks, and metadata.
Chapter 13, Creating Presentations, walks through building slides with LaTeX, from incremental reveals to column and block layouts, and generating handouts.
Chapter 14, Troubleshooting, focuses on solving problems. You’ll learn about typical LaTeX errors and warnings and how to read and use LaTeX’s messages to track down and correct issues.
Chapter 15, Using Online Resources, guides you through the vast amount of LaTeX information on the internet. We will visit an online LaTeX forum and a LaTeX Q&A site. This chapter points the way to the huge LaTeX software archives, TeX user groups’ homepages, mailing lists, Usenet groups, and LaTeX graphics galleries. It tells you where you can download LaTeX-capable editors and where you can meet LaTeX friends on blogs and X.com.
Chapter 16, Exploring Technology: From Engines to AI, takes a look under the hood at TeX engines, compares them, and discusses when to use which one. The chapter also covers AI tools that can improve your coding, writing, and formatting workflows and concludes with recommended reading.