1 Obtaining LyX and L A TEX

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1 A Guide to LyX and L A TEX Based off A Quick Guide to LyX by Jessica Moses 08 October 2011 Many economists (and academics in mathematics-heavy disciplines) use a program called L A TEX to create documents. In fact, this is the program that creates most of your exam papers. The beauty of L A TEX lies in its ability to create professional looking documents and display text and mathematics together in a clean and presentable way. The drawback to L A TEX is that there is a fairly steep learning curve. However, once you get the hang of the basics, you will find that L A TEX is much more powerful than Microsoft Word or any other document creation package. The end result also looks pretty cool. There is a program with a gentler learning curve but, in my opinion, it doesn t offer the same flexibility as L A TEX. This is LyX. LyX makes the L A TEX environment more user-friendly by taking away most of the coding. However, the cost of doing that is reduced flexibility in how your document looks. Lyx is a good place to start but I highly recommend using L A TEX for the long term. The purpose of this document is to give you a short introduction to L A TEX and an associated program, LyX. I am deeply indebted to my colleague, Jessica Moses, who is responsible for the majority of the material on LyX included in this document. 1 Obtaining LyX and L A TEX 1.1 Obtaining LyX LyX is available as freeware. 1. Go to 2. Pick the relevant version for your computer (Mac/Windows) and download 3. Install 1.2 Obtaining L A TEX L A TEX is available as freeware. There are a number of program which help you code in L A TEX. I recommend using the Protext package. 1. Go to 2. Pick the relevant version for your computer (Mac/Windows) and download 3. Install 1 of 11

2 2 Using LyX This section is the work of my good friend and colleague, Jessica Moses. The credit for this work goes to Jess. I accept responsibility for any mistakes. 2.1 First Steps When you first open the program, you should see a screen which looks like this. In order to start a new file, either press the button indicated, or file new. You should get a plain pink screen. Normal typing can be done as usual - just type straight in to the program. One thing to note is that you cannot press enter more than once. The program is smart, and will automatically start a new (indented) paragraph when you press enter. If you want more space, hold down the control button when you press enter - a little red arrow should come up. This indicates a new line, and you can use it as many times as necessary. 2 of 11

3 2.2 Writing Maths Using LyX There are two ways of writing maths using LyX. The first is an inline formula - this is included in the body of your text, like so: 4x would be one example. To do this, use insert maths inline formula. Numbered formulae are also used fairly often. If you want to show your working and make sure everything is well aligned, I suggest using Equation Array Environments, from the same menu. This ends up looking like this: 3x 2 = 12 x 2 = 12 3 = 4 x = 4 = 2 Note how everything is now nicely aligned, without having to play around. To make a new line of equations in the equation array environment, simply hit Ctrl + Enter. The most important thing to remember is to always be typing inside the blue boxes when you write maths. Otherwise, none of the commands or mathematical functions will work. Another point is that you cannot press space or enter while in one of these maths boxes - it will do all the formatting for you. The only time you should press space is when you are trying to get out of a subscript - I will get to that later. Most of the maths tools you will need are located in the bottom bar, as shown in the screenshot below. I will walk you through the ones you will use more often. I suggest that you press the pi in the bottom right hand corner - this will activate a range of other functions which you will be likely to use. 3 of 11

4 These cover most of the functions you will use. There are commands for ones you use more often; of particular note is using ˆ to get a superscript (to the power of something) and to get a subscript - again, these commands will only work in the blue boxes. To get out of the superscript or subscript, just press the space bar. If you wish to learn the commands for other things, such as Greek letters, most of them will pop up if you mouse over the buttons down the button. Just type \(command). Most of them are pretty intuitive - for example, the command for alpha is \alpha, fractions are \frac, and partial derivatives are \partial. 2.3 Previewing and Saving your work Your actual output will not look like what you are typing in LyX. The program you type in is WYSIWYM - what you see is what you mean, not what you actaully get. So don t freak out if things look kind of weird! To preview your work, you can use the buttons here: These will allow you to preview your work as a PDF file. Use the one on the left the first time you preview a document - after that, you can use the one on the right, which just refreshes the previous preview. LyX automatically saves your output as an LyX file, which allows you to go back and edit your work. To save as a PDF, simply click file export pdflatex. And you re done! Feel free to experiment, the program is wonderful and will get easier with time. If you want to learn more or have further questions, LyX has great documentation. Check out the tutorial and the help menu, both are very useful. Good luck! 4 of 11

5 3 Using L A TEX Unlike LyX, which is designed as a Graphic User Interface (GUI) environment, L A TEX is designed to work by Code alone. As such, it may seem a little daunting at first (especially when you are unfamiliar with code-based programs). However, there is a wealth of information about L A TEX available on the internet. If you have a problem, you can simply do a Google search of latex {short description of your problem} and you will almost always find a solution. I also recommend the Wikibook on L A TEX. That resource has helped me with many a problem. For the rest of this L A TEX tutorial, I shall assume that you are using the Protext system and TEXworks. 3.1 First Steps Starting a new document in TEXworks is easy. When you start the program, you should be given a new document to work with (as in the picture below). Alternatively, you can use the File New or Ctrl+N. Once you have got a new document, you now need to setup the document environment for L A TEX to work in. Usually, this is done by a Style File. I have attached a simple Style File to this document. It has most of the things you need to get started. The basic Style file contains the following necessary items: The Document Class (in this case, an article) Commands telling TEXworks to use certain additional packages Some new Commands I found useful Commands defining the Header and Footer Page Numbering Commands about the Bibliography To begin with, you should not need to change anything (except perhaps the Headers and Footers). When you are more familiar with L A TEX, you can start customising the Style File for your own needs. To tell TEXworks to use your Style file, you will need to type the command: \include{style}. 5 of 11

6 Now you can begin your document. You need to tell TEXworks to do so; you will also need to tell it where to end the document. To do this, use the Commands: \begin{document} YOUR DOCUMENT GOES IN HERE \end{document} Now you are ready to begin constructing your document. 3.2 Writing Text in L A TEX When you want to start writing text, you can simply input it directly into the code. There is NO spell-checker so I recommend that you check the spelling using MS Word or some other spell-checker. L A TEX will automatically wrap the lines for you so don t worry about that. To tell L A TEX to start a new line, simply use the \\. A example of this is in the picture below. L A TEX will not allow you to use the \\ more than twice in a row. Whilst this part of L A TEX may seem frustrating, in fact, it is L A TEX s greatest asset. Because L A TEX does not follow your spacing in the code, you can use your code to space out your working. An example of this is included in the picture below. L A TEX also has a few quirks.firstly, a few character and symbols have specific purposes in L A TEX. For example: \tells L A TEX that a command is being used. To get L A TEX to display this, you have to use the command: \textbackslash { and } are also used by L A TEXin executing commands. To get these to display, you need to use: \{ and \} respectively Other special symbols include: # $ % ˆ & { } which are displayed using \# \$ \% \textasciicircum{} \& \ \ {} respectively. Secondly, L A TEXhas specific environments for different tasks. I will talk about the commonly used ones in turn. Thirdly, L A TEX is quite picky about how commands are displayed. You need to match up brackets/parentheses/braces and commands are casesensitive. However, don t let this get you down. L A TEX has many benefits which outweight these costs once you get used to the language. You may also want to use the Line Numbers function in L A TEX which is found using: Format Line Numbers. 3.3 L A TEX s maths Environment The main purpose of Donald Knuth in creating L A TEX was to create a mark-up and programming language which could display mathematics in a attractive and precise fashion 6 of 11

7 that other programs could not. powerful. As a result, L A TEX s maths environment is extremely To start, we need to engage the maths environment. environments: There are two types of maths The In-Line environment; and The Displayed Maths environment (DME) The In-Line maths enviroment allows you to display maths next to texts and in the same line. To engage the In-line environment, use the $ key. Then type the mathematics and end with another $. There are a number of ways to engage the DME: Using the $$ (Maths) $$ will allow you to type 1 equations in the DME. Using \begin{equation} will allow you to type equations where the equations are numbered. To end the environment, use \end{equation}. Using \begin{align} will allow you to type multiple equations with equation numbers and will allow you to align the equations with the & symbol. To end the environment, use \end{align}. Using \begin{equation*} and \begin{align*} will allow you to use the Equation and Align environments without having the equation numbers. Ending this environment is exactly like before. Use To end the environment, use \end{equation*} and To end the environment, use \end{align*}. The Equation Array environment is also available and works in exactly the same manner as described by Jess above. To engage Equation Array, use \begin{eqnarray} and end with \end{eqnarray}. You can also use eqnarray* if you do not want the equation numbers. Once you have engaged the maths environment, you can begin typing the mathematics. The picture below shows how the In-line environment, the Equation, and the Align environment work. The Wikibook has a great section of Mathematics and Advanced Mathematics. I recommend you look at this. For convenience, I will explain a couple of the common maths commands. Greek letter are employed using \letter name. For example: \alpha creates α. For capital letters, capitalise the first letter, like so: \Delta creates. Only certain letters have Capital equivalents. Superscripts (including powers) are created by using: baseˆsuperscript. For example: xˆ2 creates x 2 Subscripts are created using: base subscript. For example x 1 creates x 1 Fractions are created using: \frac{x}{y} where the X is the numerator and Y is the denominator. For example \frac{1}{2} creates 1 2. Note that the numerator and denominator can be complex function as illustrated in the picture below. Furthermore, fractions can be nested. 7 of 11

8 Another helpful hint is to use line spacing and parentheses (i.e. organise your maths. { and }) to help you Given some practice, you will find the L A TEX maths environment very useful and powerful. 3.4 L A TEX s other environments List Environments L A TEX has three list environments: itemize (note the American spelling) enumerate description Itemize creates bullet points. Enumerate creates a numbered list Description allows you to write your own list headings. Example of Itemize: \begin{itemize} \item Item 1 \item Item 2 \item Item 3... \end{itemize} This will produce: Item 1 Item 2 Item of 11

9 Example of Description: \begin{description} \item[label1] Item 1 \item[label2] Item 2 \item[label3] Item 3... \end{description} This will produce: Label1 Item 1 Label2 Item 2 Label3 Item 3... In my Style File, I have defined 3 new list structures: items enumerate* description* These are exactly the same as their namesakes but are more compact. Try them out Text Formatting You can format the way your text looks. For example: Using \textbf{your text here} makes the text inside the parantheses bold (e.g. your text here) Using \underline{your text here} underlines the text inside the parentheses (e.g. your text here) Using \emph{your text here} will make the text inside the paranthesese italicised (e.g. your text here) You can also next these commands. For example \textbf{\underline{your text here} } will make the text both bold and underlined (i.e. your text here) Coloured text is obtained by using \color{declared Colour}{Your Text Here.}. For example, \color{red}{your Text Here.} creates Your Text Here. A list of colours is located here Graphics Inserting Graphics into your document can help when displaying graphs or other pictures. To include a graphic, use the command \includegraphics{./picture}. It is important that you picture is in one of the accepted formats. Usually, this is.jpg or.png. However, if you have other formats, you can try looking up how to include them. Note, the name of your picture cannot have space AND your picture must be located in the same folder as your L A TEX file. More information is here. 9 of 11

10 3.4.4 Document Structures Sometime it is helpful to readers if you structure your text in a nice way. To help you, L A TEX has some tools to organise your work. These are the \section type commands. \section{section Heading Here} will start a new section and make the section heading larger than the normal font. \subsection{subsection Heading Here} will start a new subsection and make the subsection heading larger than the normal font. Usually, sections and subsections are numbered in consecutive order in the following fashion: Section 1.1, Section 1.2, Subsection 1.2.1, Subsection 1.2.2, etc... You can go all the way to subsubsections. For Book and Report document classes, you can also have Chapters. 3.5 Compiling and Troubleshooting Now that you ve created your document, you will want to publish it as a PDF. To do this, you need to compile the document. To do this, you need to click on the Green Play button located in the top left. Make sure that the box next to the Play button has pdflatex+makeindex+bibtex selected. This is shown below: You should see a whole section of text displayed in the Console window as L A TEX compiles your work. This is normal. Once the document finishes compiling, it will display a preview window for you. The finished PDF file will be located in the same folder as your L A TEX code. If your code has some errors, the compiler will not work. It will stop and then tell you where the error is. You will need to go and troubleshoot this. In the picture below, I show what happens when you have an error. In this case, the error is my forgetting to end my align environment. To fix this, I first stop the compiler using the Red Stop button. Then, I fix the code and press Play again. Notice how the error message tells me I have a runaway argument at Line 37. It means that there is an environment which has not been properly ended. The error is occuring in the section prior to Line 37. Notice at Line 37, I haven t put in a \{align*} to end the align environment. I will need to put this in before the code will work. 10 of 11

11 3.6 From here...? Now that you have the Basics of L A TEX down, you can now experiment from here on out. I highly recommend that you use the Wikibook for help. If you have questions, feel free to me at ashley.chegn@unsw.edu.au Good Luck! 11 of 11