Friday, February 23, 2007

about Latex

Installing latex :

1. download basic miktex from here . ( it's a big file)

2. download and install texnic center . other editors: here.

3. At the very first run of texnic center, u will be asked to provide the latex distribution file. browse and select ur miktex bin folder i.e. if u've installed miktex at mymik folder, then select mymik->miktex->bin).

4. And smileeeeee !! you are done with installing & setting .

Now write your first latex file :

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
This is my first document prepared in \LaTeX.
\end{document}


select any of the options Latex->ps , Latex->pdf or Latex->dvi (default option). click build & view button (or press ctrl+shift+F5 ,whatever suits you).

There is another easier way .
  • Create a new project from file menu.
  • Select report /book or whatever suits u from a number of options. In this way most of the usual commands will be auto-written in your document :). Then build & run it as usual.

Here is a help document for typical latex syntex, that may come handy.

5. Including picture using texnic center is very easy.

  • draw anything using xfig or you can also use paint .
  • convert it to *.eps ,
    • if u r using xfig, u can do it with xfig- just click "export" then choose format (.eps or pdf)
    • u can use gimp (thanks to arshad sir)
    • or use adobe photoshop, just save your picture in *.eps format or *.pdf format if you choose Latex->pdf for compilation.
  • Now add the picture by clicking in the picture button .This button will add codes necessary for including picture in your file .
  • If you don't want the image file name to appear in the resulting document , then-
    • save the image in the same folder as the document and
    • use only image name in \includegraphics command (Thanks to nabila for this tip ).
Only thing your have to do yourself is to write an extra line, like the following :

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}

...

6. For graph plotting ,
  • plot graph using excel.
  • save graph as a picture .
  • add it as a picture (follow step 5).
  • but in this way graph will not be very clear, so i prefer using gnuplot
I don't know whether these steps are going to help u or not. but u can give it a try 'cause it had worked for me .

Last but not the least, here are some other help document1, document 2 for using latex

& good luck with latex :).

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

boring project :D

রাশেদ said...

Thanks a lot. I have just started reading some books/pdf about Latex. That help file seems to be help me a lot.

Arshad said...

You can use GIMP ( http://www.gimp.org/ ) to create the EPS files. Try it out, it's free :)

Sheetal said...

thank u :)

Mahmudul Hasan said...

Great Post !!!! Must read for every future Doctorate from Bangladesh.

Try to enrich this post if you find time. It will help lot of us. Or just make a followup.

Sheetal said...

actually, this post was meant for students like me who spent there student life by pinching the geeks and gossiping and mimic-ing and want to write their thesis using latex in last week :P