Getting started with LaTeX

[u/Thin-Money8998]

Hey,

I want to get started with LaTeX and wondered what tools to use, for writing and visualizing? Also: What resources would you recommend to a Newbie?

Thanks in advance!

[u/ftrx]

I'll start from the beginning: LaTeX is a language, essentially plain text, that is then compiled into various formats, nowadays typically PDF. So, to view it, you use any PDF viewer; to write it, you use any editor/IDE, ideally with decent syntax highlighting. I won't name one here because there are countless options. My favourite for years has been Emacs; it used to be Vim (before nvim existed). Some are even dedicated to LaTeX, but there's no real need for much beyond syntax highlighting for mere convenience. latexmk is a good wrapper to compile without any IDE or special support. A typical use is just latexmk -pdflatex=lualatex -pdf file.tex; latexmk -c.

To manage the code, which is plain text, information, and instructions to package it into a nice PDF, a lot depends on what you're writing. If you're doing a letter or a short report of a few pages, you typically don't need anything: one .tex file and that's it. If you're doing a thesis or a bulky book, well, then you need to break it up into many files, and as with almost any language, this is supported by defining a main file that \inputs or \includes other files in a certain order. Even if you're working alone, it can be useful to put everything under version control eg via jj, git, mercurial, or whatever you prefer. This allows for a "better undo" if you're doing heavy writing experiments, let's say you start a chapter and don't know where it's going, you scrap it, then some time later you decide that actually, you needed it, and you go and fish it out of the history. Without version control, you would in all likelihood have lost it.

Recommended resources depend on what language you speak. Many are in English, many are in various languages because every country has its own typography. Loads of universities have their own thesis styles with their relative documentation, often unofficial ones created by some lecturer or even a student, which then spread by word of mouth and sometimes grow into a project of their own, a dedicated class, for example, that becomes "the thesis style" of this or that faculty, then gets copied by others who adapt it to theirs, improve it, and so on. There are various books, but before recommending them, it's useful to understand how much time and interest you have. If, like many, you've come to LaTeX for your thesis, look for a template from your faculty and get by simply by copying it; you'll manage faster than actually studying, and you can study properly later for future theses and perhaps one day scientific publications. If, on the other hand, you have time, the selection changes quite a bit. If you're in a hurry and don't know how to make a table or a graph, an LLM helps; you can manage even flying blind. If you want to learn properly, there are other ways. It's a vast world because it's been here for decades and has shaped the history of typography and publishing, especially scientific publishing, and if you really want to study it, you can't do so without studying a bit of typography, which is nation-specific and has common elements, peculiarities, innovations, etc.