LaTeX Beginner on Slackware & Xfce

NightSky · 01-12-2014, 06:33 PM

Does Slackware come with a GUI for LaTeX ? What text editor does Slackware provide as a LaTeX interface? I've searched "LaTeX for Beginners using Slackware and all I get is "Slackware OS Documentation" for Beginners written in LaTeX

Tutorials I've seen thus far use some form of GUI for windows, mac, something?

Is LyX a slackware package?

I do understand LaTeX is similar to using html tags. Can anyone point me to a tutorial for learning novice on how to write with LaTeX in Slackware? Registered with LaTeX Community Forum but that looks way over my head. Yes have looked at man Tex & man latex + ran slocate on both to search for info. and did run program latex to see what would happen - nothing, ran it in terminal and got: This is pdfeTeX, Version 3.141592-1.21a-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.4)
**Test
of course nothing could be found since I have created anything. X to terminate tex?

Your time is greatly appreciated, thank you.

sycamorex · 01-12-2014, 06:42 PM

Hmmm, for a member who has been with LQ for such a long time, it's a rather basic question... but anyway.

Here's a good tutorial on LaTeX:
http://www.docs.is.ed.ac.uk/skills/d...722/3722-1.pdf

You can install Kile
http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.1/academic/kile/

or install AUCTeX in Emacs

The default teTex version on Slackware can be replaced by a fully featured TexLive (available from Slackbuilds). It is a bit of a pain to build. It (the build tmp directory) takes, if I remember correctly, around 10GB and takes quite a lot of time, but you can probably stay with what slackware ships with.

flokofcgulls · 01-12-2014, 06:50 PM

I'm not aware of any GUI's for LaTeX, but after my learning experience I can't envision really needing one. You are correct in that LaTeX is similar to HTML, with one key difference I observed being the idea of environments, which I thought about as some tags have to be within certain other tags to function correctly. There's much more to it but that was a simple way for me to think about it when I was getting started.

My basic process for creating a document:
1) Create the LaTeX document in a text editor.
2) "Compile" the document into a PDF using pdflatex.
3) Open the PDF in a viewer such as Okular to see how it looks.
4) Make necessary changes, rinse and repeat.

I usually kept my editor, the PDF file, and a terminal open side by side, so I could quickly make a change, run pdflatex again, and refresh the PDF to instantly see the changes I made. This was especially helpful early on when I was making lots of little changes trying to get things just right.

One website I found myself revisiting more than others was the wikibook, found here:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX

And assuming you'll be doing a lot of mathematics-related writing as I was, I ended up bookmarking that page:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Mathematics

Like any other topic, it can seem daunting at first, but try to learn just a few new things every day, and then keep using them, and it will come with time.

Hope you find this helpful.

qweasd · 01-12-2014, 06:56 PM

There are a bunch of GUIs, and the one that comes up right away is lyx. Since I never used any GUIs for LaTeX, I can't vouch for it, but at least one of my friends likes it.

One great resource is this wikibook. It's more of a reference than a tutorial, but it's great. I consider myself a rather advanced LaTeX user, and I use it all the time.

Assuming that you have done the full install, you got tetex already, so you can build this "hello-world.tex" with pdflatex and see it with okular:

Code:

\documentclass[12pt,letterpaper]{amsart} % mathematical article
\usepackage{charter} % load bitstream charter for paragraph font

\begin{document}

Hello world!

This is inline math: $y = \int_0^1 \frac{1}{x^2 + 1}dx$

This is an equation:

\[ y = \int_0^1 \frac{1}{x^2 + 1}dx \]

\end{document}

NightSky · 01-12-2014, 10:13 PM

Just: df -h my pc and only have 5G for /tmp so TexLive is out. I'll mostly be writing text, not mathematics.
Think I will go with lyx I've seen tutorials for it. Don't want something to completely hide the learning process of coding tags to create macros but, want to be able to just starting writing faster than I can probably learn to format and use syntax.

Will most definitely review all the suggested tutorials and try the different approaches posted here, then see how far I get. Thank you all very much. Will post progress.

fyi migrated to LQ from windows with no computer background other than word processing, slackware was, is my first & only linux experience. I was 43 when I first bought my 1Gb PC, sure loved taking it apart & putting back together had to, windows was always crashing, but this is for my blog someday. ROFL its part of my bucket list. No, I really appreciate all your input.

flokofcgulls · 01-12-2014, 10:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NightSky

Just: df -h my pc and only have 5G for /tmp so TexLive is out.

I also did not have enough room in my /tmp mount point, but I found that you can very easily edit the Slackbuild script to use a different temporary build location. I pointed it to a directory under my /home, which had plenty of space to build, and then deleted the temporary files afterwards.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NightSky

fyi migrated to LQ from windows with no computer background other than word processing, slackware was, is my first & only linux experience. I was 43 when I first bought my 1Gb PC, sure loved taking it apart & putting back together had to, windows was always crashing, but this is for my blog someday. ROFL its part of my bucket list. No, I really appreciate all your input.

Slackware is a great distribution to have as your "one and only", it will empower your knowledge of Linux like no other. Every day is a learning experience.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

emgee_1 · 01-13-2014, 04:02 AM

Robby Workman has binary TexLive packages which I have been using the last couple of years.

look here
http://rlworkman.net/pkgs/14.1/x86_64/
if you are on 14.1 64bit

Lyx I am using also and works great. My kids love it because of it simplicity.

Besides Kile you can also try TeXStudio on slackbuilds.org

Something that is not available yet but looks good and be really great in the future is
gliimpse (double "i" intended)

Youtube video : http://youtu.be/hG3ELslkHDY

Then AucTeX in emacs is a great tool.

If you are using emacs then you also have the possibility of using orgmode.

Orgmode is great for writing and organizing anything and has also the capability to convert text to latex and to compile latex to pdf and so on.

There are a lot of VIM users that switch to emacs for orgmode alone.
Emacs has a special VIM mode called evil-mode.
It is not VIM but it is so mature that even VIM lovers can be happy with it

Good luck

Marcel

Ilgar · 01-13-2014, 06:02 AM

Hi there,

Being a mathematician, I use LaTeX on a regular basis. Those who are comfortable with console editors may easily use Emacs+auctex or vi (or vim). I prefer using Kile, however there are other popular GUI alternatives such as TeXmaker (I don't know which ones other than Kile are available at Slackbuild.org, but they shouldn't be too hard to install).

For basic needs, teTeX is more than enough. I've compiled TeXlive 2012 but never installed it, keeping it ready in case some day teTeX is not enough.

There are also what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of editors, notably Lyx and TeXmacs (both can export to LaTeX), but I advise against using them for big/serious projects. Sometimes I have to type something quick and short for students and I use TeXmacs occasionally. But nothing compares to directly coding in LaTeX really.

LaTeX is not hard to learn. The syntax rules are really simple, the only difficulty is remembering the names of the commands for various structures or symbols. Modern editors like Kile provide menus and autocompletion which help a lot in this regard. There are tons of freely available guides and references for the list of commands and symbols in LaTeX. You may take a look at LaTeX wiki as an example:

http://latex.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Note for TeXmacs users: With 14.1 Slackware has moved to Guile 2.0 which breaks the compilation of TeXmacs. On 14.1 you should use the precompiled binary (provided as a .tar.gz package on the TeXmacs web page).

kikinovak · 01-13-2014, 08:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flokofcgulls

I'm not aware of any GUI's for LaTeX, but after my learning experience I can't envision really needing one.

I've been using LaTeX for a few years, on Debian and Mac OS X. My favourite tool for the job was plain Vim with a few macros, though I understand the power users in the LaTeX community favoured Emacs.

If you're using Xfce, you might want to try the Geany editor. It has a few LaTeX-specific plugins and integrates nice in Xfce. Both 'geany' and 'geany-plugins' are in SBo.

NightSky · 01-13-2014, 04:38 PM

Wow! I'm so excited and grateful for the out pour of support. Thank you for your resource rich & enthusiastic responses. I have been reading the LaTeX wiki books. Downloaded lyx.slackbuild before checking: /varlog/packages; and I have tetex-3.0-x86_64-8 &

Code:

$ latex -v
pdfeTeX 3.141592-1.21a-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.4)
$ tex -v
TeX 3.141592 (Web2C 7.5.4)

Did a little tutorial on www.sharelatex.com and downloaded my first document.zip with the tags on the side, it was easy & fun! The GUI is setup like @flokofcgulls process just integrated into 3 panes w/buttons. I'm so psyched! Just getting an overall understanding. Found TeTeX HOWTO @ linux.com Ok. I'm going to run with all this good stuff now. My last post will be a link to my personal file server for your pleasure & a few tuts right here? lol You folks are delicious, thank you so much!

NightSky · 01-13-2014, 05:02 PM

@kiknovak, how do you setup your vim because I'm comfortable with vim. Now there is the gvim too but I don't like it opens to full screen. I like my windows small, so i can use more than one at a time. I keep my terminal @ around 58x12. Tried emacs, not comfortable for me, need straight forward tuts or howto formats.

Taking another run at emacs since its already installed, according to TeTeX HOWTO it's all one needs.
http://www.tuxradar.com/content/emac...rial-beginners - Good tutorial, straightforward enough.

Richard Cranium · 01-13-2014, 07:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ilgar

Note for TeXmacs users: With 14.1 Slackware has moved to Guile 2.0 which breaks the compilation of TeXmacs. On 14.1 you should use the precompiled binary (provided as a .tar.gz package on the TeXmacs web page).

They appear to be working on a port to Guile 2.0. (But it isn't there yet, so your advice still holds.)