Tools for Scientific Writing -- with LaTeX

General information

The main focus of the course is to give an introduction to the typesetting tool LaTeX. We will also discuss general layout issues. No specific software will be required other than a standard distribution of LaTeX, including pdfLaTeX.

The course is offered to graduate students at the department. The course corresponds to one point, but rewarding this is left to the supervisors.

Lectures

• Introduction to LaTeX. What is it about?.
• Some typesetting and layout issues. What to think about?
• Using document templates (\documentclass{...}).
• Writing equations.
• Cross references (ref. to figures, pages, tables, chapters, etc.).
• Figures (formats, placement, captions, etc.).
• Figures (layout issues. Fonts, sizes, vectorized v.s. bitmapped.).
• Tables
• Bibliography references (\bibitem & BibTeX).
• Presentations in LaTeX.
• Tweaking the layout....

The actual contents of the course might vary depending of the participants' previous experience with LaTeX.

Lecture notes and other files

• Document template for preparing presentations in pdfLaTeX.
• Slides from lecture 1 (March 9) in PDF format and as pdfLaTeX source.
• Slides from lecture 2 in PDF format and as pdfLaTeX source.
• Slides from lecture 3 in PDF format and as pdfLaTeX source.

Literature

• M. Goossens, F. Mittelbach, & A. Samarin, The LaTeX Companion, Addison-Wesley, 1994. ISBN: 0201541998.

Examination

• Induvidual homework assignment. Prepare a document in LaTeX. This can either be one of your old papers/reports written in for example Word, or you next article.