General ⇒ i want to die, my phd thesis has to be in latex by next week

[frenchcr]

i dont understand this stuff, i havent got a clue where to start.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi,

I recommend to buy a good LaTeX introduction book, you could ask a friend who knows LaTeX to help you with the start. Perhaps have a look here: LaTeX Resources for Beginners.

If you should have questions or encounter errors, just post it here, we will try to help.

Stefan

[frabjous]

Oh no... one week is a tough assignment.

You might start with the "Getting started with Tex, LaTeX and friends" page at TUG.

A very good starting introduction, available in a variety of languages, is lshort.

Good luck!

[frenchcr]

thanks for the pointers to the books. im not sure if i have that much time

q. why does the following table of contents come out wrong??? It just turns out like a paragraph of text.


\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{report}

\begin{document}

\title{...........}
\author{...........}
\date{...........}
\maketitle

\pagenumbering{roman}

\tableofcontents
1 Introduction
1.1 Introduction to .........
1.2 blah blah
1.3 blah blah
\end{document}

[torbjorn t.]

Use \chapter{},\section{}, \subsection{} etc. to create your headings, and the TOC will be generated automatically at the point where you've added \tableofcontents to your code. Note that you will have to compile twice.

Try this, and see how it turns out:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{report}

\begin{document}

\title{...........}
\author{...........}
\maketitle

\pagenumbering{roman}

\tableofcontents
\chapter{Introduction}
\section{Introduction to}
Text.
\section{blah blah}
More text.
\section{blah blah}
Text, text, text.
\end{document}

[localghost]

This can't work. You have to use sectioning commands.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,english]{report}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\title{The first try}
\author{frenchcr}
%\date{}

\begin{document}
  \maketitle
  \pagenumbering{roman}
  \tableofcontents

  \chapter{Introduction}\label{chp:intro}
    \blindtext

    \section{One}\label{sec:one}
      \blindtext

    \section{Two}\label{sec:two}
      \blindtext

    \section{Three}\label{sec:three}
      \blindtext
\end{document}

Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten¹

[frenchcr]

hi thorsten i copied that file but it doesnt output anything?

[lalop]

The good news is, as they said, a lot of things, like the table of contents, table/figure numbers, citations and bibilography, are generated autoamtically.

The bad news, is that you have to type it all in via latex commands. Some of it is easy, every chapter should be labelled \Chapter{name}, \Section{name}, \Subsection{name} (put star like \Chapter*{name} if you don't want it to be numbered automatically).

\Chapter{This analysis}

With the bibilography, if you have only one week, I'd say keep it simple and use \thebibilography: http://noodle.med.yale.edu/latex/latex2 ... tx-73.html

You can cite elements from the bibilography: \cite{label} (where label is something you define in the bibilography)

For tables and figures, you can just google them. Keep in mind that you can also \label{name you choose} them, and this will allow you to refer to Figure \ref{name you choose} later. Don't try to get the table or figure exactly where you want it. Just make sure it's in the general locality and reference the Table \ref{table name} whenever you want to talk about it.

Italics need to be turned it into \emph{italicized text} or \texit{italicized text}, bold \textbf{italicized text}

------

Which just leaves the math. Hope you don't have a trillion equations, or it might be hard. But the math is essentially easy. If you have a long series of equations like

Code: Select all

A = B

    = B'

    = B''

..etc

then use the eqnarray / eqnarray* (google). if you have a giant equation centered in the middle of the page, then use double math mode $$equation$$. If you just have an equation within normal text, use single math mode $equation$. Fraction is just \frac{}{}, superscrpt ^, subscript _ e.g. e^{\frac{x+2}{2i}}, \sum_{i=1}^\infty

Note: \displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^\infty makes it larger.

Very useful site for finding random latex symbols.

[lalop]

Another thing. Usually (not always) if a uni makes you use latex, they have a latex template for you.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi lalop,

eqnarray and $$...$$ are obsolete, see l2tabu. Not a big problem for a user, but it's better to recommend current methods. It's just a remark, before somebody else does it's good that you're helping here.

Stefan