The best way to learn how to program is to do something useful, so this introduction to LaTeX is built around a common scientific task: publication preparation.
Preparing Unformatted Text
We are preparing an unformatted text file for publication. The document includes a description of a trip to the Near East, Notes to Interested Researchers, Preparations of Compounds, and Elliptical Formula Derivation.
So, the learning objective for this course are:
- Format symbols in the text to be rendered properly in a final document
- Organize the content in a logical manner
- Add important details to the content
- Present a final document, suitable for publication
To do all that, we’ll have to learn a little bit about document creation.
Prerequisites
You need to understand the concepts of files and directories and how to start a LaTeX compiler before tackling this lesson. This lesson sometimes references Overleaf although you can use any LaTeX compiler mentioned in the Setup page.
The commands in this lesson pertain to LaTeX2e. Compilation will be done with pdflatex (If this is aimed at beginners then these terms are likely jargon to them. Can they be explained or link to explanatory material?)
Getting Started
To get started, follow the directions on the Setup page to download data. If you are using Overleaf, you will not have to download a LaTeX compiler to your computer. If you already have a preferred editor, you can use that.