![\"f(x) = x^2\"](\"http:\/\/adrianbell.me\/wp-content\/ql-cache\/quicklatex.com-70530c6d1cae099e4aaa3db7f8897c93_l3.png\" "\\"Rendered")
<\/p>\nAssignment writing seems to be a very large part of studying a part-time degree in Mathematics. For my first module I hand-wrote every assignment, but with my handwriting being less than perfect I wasn't entirely happy with the neatness of the end result.<\/p>\n
I tried numerous other ways of writing my assignments but the formatting of equations always proved to be a headache. After exploring a couple of avenues (Open Office with equation editor, and Google Docs), I decided to settle on LaTeX.<\/p>\n
LaTeX is a formatting (or rather, typesetting) language, much like HTML in a way. For example, the following:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
is written in LaTeX as follows:<\/p>\n
\u00a0f(x) = x^2<\/pre>\nWhich is nice. Of course this is a simple example, and the learning curve involved in producing your first 18-page assignment with it can be rather steep.<\/p>\n
What I'd like to do every now and again is post a clever little bit of LaTeX I discover that gets me out of a hole. With any luck, after a handful of posts, LaTeX will become a lot less of a mystery.<\/p>\n
My operating system of choice at the moment is Linux Mint<\/a>. I like it because it's the only version of Linux I've ever installed that just worked<\/em> straight after installation. No sound problems. No problems with network access. Everything<\/em> worked.<\/p>\n
As such, I started out by trying to work out how to get LaTeX working in Linux Mint. It turns out that to install it, you can run this in a shell:<\/p>\n
sudo apt-get install texlive-full<\/pre>\nThis installation command\u00a0should work on any Debian-based release of Linux (Ubuntu, Mint, etc...). It will install all the necessary things you need to start writing in LaTeX, including the essential command:<\/p>\n
pdflatex<\/pre>\nwhich will do the hard work of compiling your hand-typed LaTeX tex files to beautiful pdfs.<\/p>\n
I won't be writing much about Windows, as I don't use it a great deal these days, but if you want an equivalent you can search the net for something called MiKTeX. Any actual LaTeX formatting language I write will of course work on both Linux and Windows.<\/p>\n
More LaTeX to come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Assignment writing seems to be a very large part of studying a part-time degree in Mathematics. For my first module I hand-wrote every assignment, but with my handwriting being less than perfect I wasn't entirely happy with the neatness of the end result. I tried numerous other ways of writing my assignments but the formatting … Continue reading An Introduction To LaTeX<\/span>