The Big LaTeX discussion

Although it is perfectly acceptable to handwrite your TMAs at the beginning of every course someone starts the "Big Latex Discussion" again.

It's usually a nerd that starts off by listing the irrelevant but impressive specs of his ( not often her ) hardware, or bloats how much computing know how he has ( part-time math students often work in IT ). He then announces that he 'is going to make his TMAs in LaTeX.

Wow. Jaws dropping. Not.

Not often he also provides us with a list of software artefacts required, version numbers included. Nerdy but deep in the autistic spectrum.

I haven't decided how I'll produce my TMAs this time. I see three options. Hand-written, LaTeX typeset or (new!) handwritten but digitally stored in vector graphics format.

LaTeX became a problem ( pita ) for me in the past when I had to add drawings and stuff. Making and including mathematical drawings in LaTeX is not trivial. Besides it is a major distraction, while you should be thinking about math you are figuring out how some latex drawing package works. Serious waste of time.

Since you can draw on a tablet, store it in SVG and thus manipulate it any way you want, doing the formulas in LaTeX and the drawings 'by hand' is probably the route I take.

Since I do Android work Eclipse became more or less my IDE of (only) choice so I'll give TeXlipse with PDF4Eclipse a try.

TeXnicCenter 2.0 Alpha 4

TeXnicCenter have released Alpha 4 of TeXnicCenter, the LaTeX IDE for Windows.

More at: http://www.texniccenter.org/

LaTeX in Blogger

EDIT AGAIN (August 21, 2011): I seem to have this working again, using the following code:


Which I got from watchmath's author in this blogpost.

(OLD EDIT:  You may notice that you see $$ instead of math formulas.  WatchMath's server used to go down periodically, so they've moved the service to Google's, but I haven't had a chance to change the code.  That's annoying to have to go back to fix old posts and disinterests me in their service.  Here's the post explaining their changes. )

ORIGINAL POST:
Guillermo has a quick post about using LaTeX in blogger.  That's great, as it is frustrating to show nice math.  My question was if you needed a widget, but it turns out you can do it using the Edit HTML tab in the composition window.  For example,

$2x + 3 = \frac{1}{2}$

$\displaystyle \frac{x+3}{(x+2)(2x-1)}$

$$ \frac{x+2}{2x-1} $$




Quick and easy!  It uses the WatchMath service.







Install LaTeX?

LaTeXDraw

Although typesetting mathematics has somewhat of a learning curve you will get used to it and after a while it will become your only option for writing mathematics. If you aren't using LaTeX yet, there will come a day when it is hard to understand you could do ever without it. Like the Internet, for example.

Typesetting mathematics is one thing. Typesetting pictures, or drawings is an entirely different ballgame. Where LaTeX is built upon Don Knuth's original TeX, the community created tons of add-on packages for LaTeX. For the typesetting of graphics there are two major options: PSTricks and TikZ/PGF. Although the possibilities of creating professional graphics in your documents seems limitless, creating them by hand, i.e. through code, is hard. Again, the community came with a solution by creating IDEs for these packages.

( As I blogged before ) M381 TMA01 requires the inclusion of a flowchart. What is simpler to draw than a flowchart? Well, it is the lines, arrows, text insertions, fonts and all that which makes it a challenge. I decided to install the IDE for PSTricks called LaTeXDraw and I must say that the first results are hopeful. LaTeXDraw is a graphical drawing editor for LaTeX and can be used to generate PSTricks code. LaTeXDraw is developed in Java and thus runs on top of Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. The LaTeXDraw GUI consists of two panels, a left panel drawbord and a right panel code editor. The panels remain in-sync while either graphically modifying the drawing or via code. Using the mouse you can drag and drop template figures and draw them, basically like as in any drawing tool. The PSTricks commands for LaTeX are instantly generated in the code-editor. When you are done a simple copy and paste into your document completes the process.

It looks as though LaTeXDraw becomes part of my basic software toolkit. I'll keep you posted.

LaTeXDraw

Investigating LaTeX graphics ( M381 TMA due soon )

M381 TMA01 consists of nine questions, 5 about number theory and 4 about mathematical logic. Question 6b asks us to draw a flowchart of a URM program. Since I typeset my TMA's ( instead of using a pen or worse: using a word processor ) I need to insert the flowchart as a graphic. Although almost any graphic can be inserted in a document ( including scans from manually drawn stuff ) I want to give the TMA a professional look and feel ( no: it won't add a single point, but are you transforming yourself into a knowledgeable mathematician or are you only interested in the grades? ). I investigated what the possibilities are for producing high-quality graphics with LaTeX.

It was as if I entered a new world entirely. I looked at PS-Tricks before but got overwhelmed with its possibilities ( and possible steep learning curve ), this time I had a better look. And I looked at PGF/TikZ as well. Both look very impressive and have the support of third-party editors. Both seem to have an established and satisfied user-base. I might have overlooked something but it seems that PS Tricks and PGF/TikZ are the competing 'standards' for native LaTeX graphics.

My next step is installing and as a test trying to create the flow-chart graphic for the M381 TMA.

PS Tricks graphic example

Links:
- PS Tricks
- PGF/TikZ (TikZ ist kein Zeichenprogramm)

[TIP] - LaTeX for OpenOffice

I copied this pic from the site of OOLatex, which is a LaTeX extension for the Open Office Suite.

Click to enlarge

To be frank I have only just begun with exploring the possibilities to produce texts with ( LaTeX -) mathematics on Powerpoint ( or Impress ) format. - I have learned many times over that I shouldn't write with the presentation in mind. I have only recently implemented this simple rule here on this blog and the effort slowly begins to pay off. But that's another issue.

[TIP] - Copy MathJax LaTeX source

If you see mathematical equations in this blog then they are created using MathJax. If you move your mouse cursor over the equation and then right-click a little MathJax menu appears. You can for example copy the LaTeX source of the equation and use it in another application.

[News] - Springer.com releases LaTeX Search

The Springer LaTeX search lets you search through over 2,660,787 LaTeX code snippets to find the equation you need.

Try it here: http://www.latexsearch.com/