An Introduction to LATEX

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1 An Introduction to LATEX Mathematics 23a, Fall 2012 By: Isabel Vogt, Will Rafey, and Neil Gat Last Updated: 13 September, Introduction The simplest way to learn TeX is by example. Copy the heading from an existing TeX source and insert your document there. If you have a computer, you should view this PDF with the TeX source open next to it. An invaluable resource for creating nice L A TEXdocuments is the internet. You can google just about anything and find good documentation. This outline is meant to help you get started, but is in no way comprehensive and may not even present the most elegant or efficient solutions to various problems. You can also ask teaching fellows to post the TeX source for problem sets, and then just insert your answers into those documents. The source code for Math 23 problem sets will be posted on the course website alongside the PDFs. To get you started here are some basics: 1. Before you can begin the document you need to set up the document class and load some formatting packages. A basal set that will probably work for everything you need to do is: \documentclass[12pt]{article} \usepackage{latexsym} \usepackage{amssymb,amsmath} \usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx} \usepackage{tikz} 2. Your document should be encased between the commands \begin{document} and \end{document} 1

2 3. To enter Math Mode, enclose your mathematical text within two $ s. This simply adds math in-line with your paragraph of text. As an example: The composition of functions f g h(x) is associative. 4. Using two consecutive $ s will center your math text in the middle of the page ( display mode ) and is often used for important equations or lines in a proof. As an example: i=0 1 i 2 = 1 6 π2 An associated formatting note is that math object that are generally taller than a line (e.g. vectors, summations, or fractions with the command \frac) really only format correctly within double $ s. 5. Symbols in TeX are usually quite intuitive. All greek letters are formed by \name for lowercase and \Name for uppercase. To get the blackboard style for large characters (e.g. Z) the command is \mathbb{z} (to remember, the bb is for blackboard). Everything is well documented on the internet. Some common symbols you may encounter on a daily basis are: TeX Command \forall \exists \in a \frac{a}{b} b \geq, \leq a i a i \int 0 {\infty} 0 \partial Symbol, a i a i 2

3 Matrices are notoriously painful to TeX (unless you define some commands of your own). The basic notation is the matrix: [ ] a b c d Is given by the TeX command: \begin{bmatrix} a & b \\ c & d \end{bmatrix} (Note the similarities in how to change rows/columns between matrix definitions and table definitions below) If you would like rounded brackets around you matrix, change bmatrix to pmatrix. 6. Some commands for arrows in TeX are: Arrow TeX Command \rightarrow \Rightarrow 7. Never type text in math mode - use the command \text{your text} to enter normally formatted text. Look at the difference: All math mode: lim a n = 0; clearlythissequenceconvergestozeroforsufficientlylargen n Using the text environment inside: lim a n = 0; clearly this sequence converges to zero for sufficiently large n n 8. Often words used commonly in math mode such as sin, cos, lim have symbols. Use a backslash in front of their name to get the symbol (e.g. \sin{\theta} for sin θ). This will make your document look much cleaner and more professional. 3

4 2 Some Things to Do in L A TEX 2.1 Enter list of items Use the code \begin{enumerate} and \end{enumerate} to create your numbered list. The items in your list are all created with a \item in the middle. To create bullet points, replace enumerate with itemize. For the Mac version of TeXShop, you can go to the Macros tab and insert a pre-formatted layout for bullets. 2.2 Define your own commands TeX commands are often a pain to write repeatedly (I have attempted not to use shortcuts here to make sure it is transferable to your documents) but it saves you a lot of time to define shortcuts for commands you commonly type. A new command is defined with the following at the beginning of a document: \newcommand{name of new command}[number of arguments]{definition} For example, if you wanted to define the symbol α (\alpha) as simply \al, you would write: \newcommand{\al}[0]{\alpha} More interestingly, you could define a command that helps with formatting that you commonly use - such as a command that sets up a multiple choice question with solutions. Here is an example: Suppose g : R 2 R 4 is a function such that the directional derivatives at x 0 along v 1, v 2, and v 3 are e 1, e 2, and e 3 respectively. What can we say about g? 1. g is not differentiable at x 0 2. g is differentiable at x 0 3. g is a linear transformation 4

5 4. g is discontinuous at x 0 5. none of the above 2.3 Create a table Tables can be somewhat tricky when you are beginning. Here is an example. The idea is that you need to create a tabular environment (i.e. \begin{tabular}{c c} (where the bracketed c s after the initialization indicate that the there are two columns of centered text) and \end{tabular}) in which you enter your rows of the table. The basic idea is: The symbol & gets you to the next column The double backslash (\\) ends a row Horizontal lines are given by \hline Vertical lines are specified in the initialization of the table (e.g. {c c c} would separate the three columns by vertical lines) Table 1: Some Common Finite Groups Group Description Always Abelian? Symmetries of? C p The cyclic group of order prime p Yes Rotations of regular p-gon S n Symmetric group on n letters No Permutations of {1,..., n} A n Alternating group on n letters No Even permutations of {1,..., n} D n Dihedral group of order 2n No Symmetries of n-gon The example not only uses a tabular environment, but also makes the tabular environment a table. This is achieved by creating a table around the tabular environment with \begin{table} and \end{table}). The pros of using this built in formatting is that the table will now act more like a figure - i.e., it is treated as a float, so that you can give it a caption (using \caption{your text} and TeX keeps track of it for referencing and creating a list of tables, etc. 5

$The idea is you use a file in the same folder as your TeX document in the command \includegraphics{filename}.$ You can include before the picture a specification of height or width (e.g. [width=5in]).

You can include before the picture a specification of height or width (e.g. [width=5in]).

6 2.4 Inserting a Picture This is generally quite easy if you have the Tikz package loaded in addition to graphicx. The idea is you use a file in the same folder as your TeX document in the command \includegraphics{filename}. You can include before the picture a specification of height or width (e.g. [width=5in]). Here is an example: If you want to be fancy, you can make your graphic a figure, with all the benefits that come with making your tabular environment into a table. Below is an example of a figure. Note, figures are floats, so they don t always stay where you originally put them! The command to have them stay inline ie [ht] after initializing the figure. Figure 1: Infallible Logic 6

7 2.5 Creating Diagrams with TikZ This is a topic for which there exists great tutorials and documentation on the internet already. The basic idea is that by creating a TikZ environment (\begin{tikzpicture} and \end{tikzpicture}) in your document you can use simple TikZ commands to draw lines and curves. All the drawing in a TikZ diagram is specified by the starting and end vertices. For example, in order to draw a line of relative length 4 across the page a possible TikZ command would be: \draw (0,0) -- (4,0); You can also create nodes (and label them!) quite simply. Adding on to our previous example, we could label with: \draw (0,0) node{$\bullet$}; \draw (0,0) node[left]{a}; \draw (4,0) node{$\bullet$}; \draw (4,0) node[right]{b}; In all, our simple diagram would look like: A B For you TeX-source-viewing pleasure here is a slightly more complicated example: y L 4 3 (2, 2) (0, 0) x 2 1 7

8 3 Some L A TEX Tips 1. Typeset often! I leave my PDF open next to my working Tex source so that I can view both at all times. This allows you to catch errors quickly, which is perhaps the hardest part about compiling a TeX document. 2. If you are trying to insert and image, and are getting a bounding box error from the TeX control, add the package Tikz to the beginning of your document and this should clear up this error. 3. If you want to use superscripts and subscripts, make sure you are in math mode (i.e., within parentheses). If you are using more than just one character, your string of characters must be enclosed within curly brackets. If you want to super/subscript text, make sure you create a text environment within math mode. This is achieved by \text{your text}. 8

Guide to using L A TEX

Guide to using L A TEX Andrew Stevens, UC Berkeley 1 What is L A TEX, and why use it? L A TEX (pronounced LAH-tekh or LAY-tekh) is a language and document preparation system for typesetting. L A TEX is