We have invited Dr. Graham Hendra to give us a LaTeX workshop on Tuesday, April 18th, 2-4:30pm, at CEME 1203. Snacks, finger foods, and refreshments will be served with RSVP (register form below). This event is open to all UBC students, although MECH graduate students will be given priority. Please register in the RSVP form and complete the preparation work described below before you come to the workshop.
Tutorial Overview
LaTeX is a free document preparation system which is well-suited to preparing large, complicated documents like reports and theses. It takes care of many of the tedious parts of formatting complicated reports by automating things like section/equation/figure numbering, cross-referencing, and table of contents generation. Some authors find that this leaves them freer to concentrate on the content, which makes the process of report-writing less stressful and the final product more logically-structured.
The main drawback of LaTeX is its steep learning curve. The workshop is an attempt to counter this; it’s intended to be an overview of LaTeX for new users, including total beginners. If all goes well, participants will leave the workshop confident in their ability to prepare simple LaTeX documents, aware of the more advanced features, and aware of where to go for help or more information.
To participate IN the workshop, please register using this form :
https://forms.gle/syHJfqFPckx7WEQC8
Prep Work
(The prep work should only take 10-20 min)
1) Install a LaTeX distribution. This will vary based on your operating system:
- Windows: Install Basic MiKTeX from http://miktex.org/download. The file you want is “Basic MiKTeX Installer”; there are 32- and 64-bit versions available, although the 32-bit version will also work on 64-bit machines. The instructions for both installations can be found at http://miktex.org/howto/install-miktex. When you reach the “Settings” page in the installer, I recommend setting “Preferred paper” to “Letter” (as that is what we typically use in North America) and “Install missing packages on-the-fly” to “Ask me first”. You should also restart your computer sometime between when you install MiKTeX and the beginning of the LaTeX workshop.
- Mac: Install MacTeX from http://tug.org/mactex/Note that the full version of MacTex is a very large download (>2 GB), so I recommend that you start this one well in advance; if you’re in a rush to complete this before the tutorial, you can install the “light” version BasicTeX, but in the long run it is recommended that you install the full version.
- Linux: LaTeX was probably installed with your operating system. You can check by opening a terminal (Ctrl-Alt-t) and running the command “latex.” If the response is something like “This is pdfTeX, Version …. ” then LaTeX is installed and you can close the terminal; if it’s something like “The program ‘latex’ is currently not installed. You can install it by …” then you have to install it. To install, run “sudo apt-get install texlive” in terminal and authenticate with your password as you would for other software.
2) Install a LaTeX editor. We will use an editor called Texmaker as it is available for all 3 major operating systems. Download and install the appropriate version from http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/download.html
3) Download the .zip of example files and slides from the link below, and un-zip them for use during the tutorial:
Bio of Workshop Instructor
Graham Hendra studied at UBC from 2011 to 2019 and graduated with a PhD. He now works as a Lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering department teaching thermofluids courses and coordinating Mech 2. Graham originally developed a LaTeX tutorial for Mech grad students when he was one himself in 2014, and has since run the tutorial once a year as an optional extra for Mech 2 students.
We look forward to see you there!