What even is LaTeX

No. It is not the clothing material or the silicon stuff. LaTeX (yes spelt like that) is a typesetting software that- BORING right?! Ok so LaTeX is kind of a hybrid between HTML and your favourite (or least favourite) programming language. What does that mean? Well it means it allows you to write fancy documents (for HTML that’s webpages) in a certain structure but for LaTeX the fancy documents can be anything from a research paper to a book of any kind. Yes I wrote a book and a couple of reports using it, I know what I’m talking about (mostly).

So why do you need it? If you’re writing a project report and want to look professional without ripping your hair out trying to do numbered sections in MS Word, you NEED LaTeX

The Guide Part

You’re still here? Good, let’s start with there is a super easy way to get started with LaTeX that will take you 5 minutes at most (if you have internet that isn’t dial-up). All you need to do is go here and sign up for an account, it’s free! Obviously has a premium version with more features if you just need to write something up real quick it’s enough. The next thing you want to do is press the New project button and you’re set to start writing LaTeX. However if you click that templates button in the top right corner you’ll find that you don’t need to start from nothing. Plenty of templates for a book, thesis or anything else really. Pick one you like and you can start a project with it. All you have to do after that is just start writing with it. If you ever get lost the holy documentation seriously click this link will teach you everything you need to know about adding images, tables or whatever it is you want to add to your awesome upcoming thesis! (or book) hold up they got a quick tutorial too yeah check that out too after you finish reading this blog by yours truly :).

The Hard Way

Would not be a blog post without me sharing how I prefer to do things huh. Alright so overleaf isn’t doing anything too magical (it’s super neat tho!). No joke overleaf is probably still my go-to when I want to find templates or even write up something quickly. But of course I went out of my way to setup a LaTeX environment on my own computer. Why? Because I can and I like to use my favourite text editor (emacs/vim) for everything. For the normal people you might want to use VsCode or even Notepad++ to write up your thesis via LaTeX on the go without an internet connection. If that’s what you want keep reading.

Installing LaTeX Itself

First you need the environment on your computer. From the title this is for Windows. If you’re on Linux you don’t need me to explain this shit to you really (just install the texlive packages lol) Download the texlive distribution for windows here and run the installer. Once it’s done you will have two new start menu entries, one for managing packages (more on that later) and another for the TeXworks editor. You can straight up use the TeXworks editor to write LaTeX and call it a day (download a template from overleaf to kickstart it)

VsCode

The LaTeX Workshop extension should be all you need. Take this with a grain of salt as I do not personally use VSCode. :D

Conclusion

Use LaTeX, steep learning curve but worth it in my opinion. Overleaf is more than enough unless you need hyperspecific things or don’t always have internet access. That’s about it till next time :D