If you're just beginning to use LaTeX, or haven't even started yet, it might seem like there are a lot of options for compiling your documents. That's eventually going to be great for you, because it allows you to hone in on the perfect setup for you, but at the beginning it can be daunting. Here are a couple of options for the kinds of ways you can do it. I recommend you to go with what's easiest for you at the beginning.
You can compile your TeX code on your own computer, or in a cloud computing service. I strongly recommend eventually doing it on your own machine, but using an easy cloud-like service like ShareLaTeX could be extremely convenient for new users (I began writing LaTeX with ShareLaTeX).
This and sites like it allow you to easily write code in one panel and see a preview in another; you will not need to install anything on your computer.
This is the better option in my opinion, because you can create a custom setup to fit your own needs and don't need to entrust your files to a foreign server. There are many options here, so installation can be compilated at first!
I strongly recommend not just installing the TeX compiler, but all TeX packages for your own convenience, so you have everything offline already. This will be a big download at first, but nowadays the storage space should be minimal.
On Debian-based distros (Ubuntu/Linux Mint):
$ sudo apt-get install texlive-full
For Arch-based distros (Manjaro, Parabola, Antergos):
$ sudo pacman -S texlive-most texlive-lang
Note that some minor distros will use tlmgr to install TeX packages instead of the main repositories.
Download and install the packages here. (Choose the net install to be able to install all packages.)
Download and install the packages here.
Generally, you can use the pdflatex command in your terminal to compile a .tex file into a .pdf. You can do think manually or using another program to make this streamlined for you.
For vim users, there are several ways to automatically compile LaTeX code, but my favorite by far is the vim-live-latex-preview originally put together Kevin Klement.
I'll run you through installing it since people have asked. First make sure you have mupdf, xdotool and git installed. Then, you should install a vim add-on manager; I use Pathogen, so here are the directions for installing by it.
Note: both Pathogen and the vim-live-latex-preview are available in the AUR, I belive, so Arch users can skip these steps if they install it that way.
First, if you don't have vim-pathogen in your distro's repository, you can easily install it with these commands:
mkdir -p ~/.vim/autoload ~/.vim/bundle && \
curl -LSso ~/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim https://tpo.pe/pathogen.vim
Also make sure you have the following lines in your ~/.vimrc:
execute pathogen#infect()
syntax on
filetype plugin indent on
Then download the actual vim-live-latex-preview package here.
git clone https://github.com/ying17zi/vim-live-latex-preview.git
mv vim-live-latex-preview ~/.vim/bundle/
You may also need to add ~/.vim/bundle/vim-live-latex-preview/bin to your PATH in /etc/profile. This package uses biber to compile references, so be sure to have biber installed and use compatible syntax.
After that, the package should be installed and can easily be run whenever vim opens a .tex file; simply press the shortcut \o to begin the auto-compile. Check the documentation for all the bells and whistles!
Emacs has the AUCTeX package for compiling LaTeX.
TeXMaker is one of the more common LaTeX creation programs for people who don't use crazy customizable text editors like vim or emacs. This might be best for newbies wanting to compile offline.
Lyx is a popular way to write LaTeX in a way which is more WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). It's not my style, so I don't vouch for it personally, but I know several people who really like it.
I have a full video tutorial series on learning LaTeX, broken into small sensible parts, here.
Basically, it's how big boys write and format documents. Every public brief, scientific article, book, cryptocurrency whitepaper or even outline written by people who know what they're doing is written in LaTeX.
If you want to see examples of documents made with LaTeX, you can see my Master's thesis here or another paper here that shows some diagrams and other features you can have in LaTeX. Of course, LaTeX documents can be infinitely customized.
No. It's sort of like learning vim. People complain about how hard it is until they take the bare minimum of time to learn it and realize how much more effective they are with it. The return on investment is massive. I wrote the thesis above in LaTeX in around a week of learning from the bare minimum.
LaTeX is a markup language, meaning that you write documents in whatever text editor of your choosing and instead of manually moving margins and placing things yourself, everything is optimally placed when you compile the document into a .pdf.
Markup languages are great because they separate the task of writing from the task of formatting. It's somewhat similar to the difference between HTML (a markup language) and CSS (which does styling) and Javascript (which does scripting). LaTeX does the equivalent of all three, but it allows you to do them all separately so you can easily extend documents.
sed -i and grep with .tex files is fantastic.Niche features that basically no Word-user uses. Also they change with every new update. This is the primary operating structure of LaTeX.
The core LaTeX package (texlive) is fairly small, but I highly
recommend you download all the LaTeX packages out there at the
beginning (a big download). This is nice because as you learn more
things, you won't have to manually download new packages. You'll be
able to experiment with new LaTeX abilities through new packages
seamlessly. Here's how you get them:
pacman -S texlive-most texlive-langapt-get install texlive-fulltlmgr to install TeX packages
instead of the main package manager.Once you've downloaded and installed that, you have a fully-featured LaTeX engine on your machine! You can make lots of amazing things that you don't even fully realize yet.
First thing to learn is how to compile documents with pdflatex and the
basic principles of the TeX lanugage. In this first video, I talk about
how basic text, paragraphs, titles, headings and more work. This in
itself is enough to make a professional write-up.
As you make more complex documents, you'll want to automatically number and interrelate section, figure and other numbers together. LaTeX makes this super simple, and make it even easier to copy your file into a new file where it will automatically update all cross-referenced numbers.
Bibliography management is a huge plus in LaTeX through biber. I haven't written a bibliography in more than half a decade due to the fact that LaTeX only needs a bibliography file of metadata and autogenerates citations for any needed source.
TeX isn't all text either. You can insert and nicely format images in a way that they are optimally placed without too much human interference.
As you do more specific things, you might want to make your own macros and functions. This really makes things easier, and you can do very complex things very elegantly.
LaTeX isn't just for printable documents either. You can change your document into a Beamer presentation, allowing you to present it as a slide show similar to Microsoft PowerPoint's.
Here, I also give some extra pointers while I make a résumé.