General ⇒ Different Document Class Types?

[emin351]

Hello

I am new at Latex and Texnic Center. I want write projects homework and reports via Texnic Center. However, I do not know how to use different document classes. The only I know is "article", and margins are too long for me in this article.

In LyX there are many types like IEEE, Report etc. Is there any in Texnic Center? If so, where is that option?

Thanks

[josephwright]

This is set in the \documentclass line, for example:

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\documentclass{memoir}

would use the memoir class.

If you are only worried about margins, rather than change the class use the geometry package:

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\usepackage[margin=2cm]{geometry}

[emin351]

Thanks for the information. That help me a lot. In addition, I would like to ask if there is a list of classes, or not.

Thanks

[josephwright]

Not really, as there are always new classes. There are of course the ones that come with LaTeX (minimal, article, report, book, letter), the memoir class and the KOMA-Script bundle for "general" use. For specialist tasks there are specialist classes, for example beamer for presentations. Lots of journals then have dedicated classes, as do unviersities, etc.

[emin351]

Not really, as there are always new classes. There are of course the ones that come with LaTeX (minimal, article, report, book, letter), the memoir class and the KOMA-Script bundle for "general" use. For specialist tasks there are specialist classes, for example beamer for presentations. Lots of journals then have dedicated classes, as do unviersities, etc.

How can I learn what kind of different classes exist that I can use. For example, how did you learn it?

[gmedina]

A good source (not only for this particular issue) is the CTAN site. Have a look at the Alternative Document Classes link, in the Topic Index of the TeX Catalogue Online (Preface Ctan Edition).

[frabjous]

TexnicCenter is a LaTeX editor. It doesn't have its own document classes; it just uses the ones LaTeX does.

As noted already, this is a huge list, and always growing. However, there is a subset of them that are the standard ones you should know about. Probably you wouldn't need to deviate from them unless you had a particular purpose. You're not going to use the document class for a given university's thesis unless you're writing a thesis there, or use a particular journal's document class unless you were submitting to that journal, which you'd know about beforehand. Most of them can be learned about by browing the documentation at CTAN if need be.

The "standard classes", described in Lamport's original LaTeX book, such as article, book, report and letter, can be learned about in a variety of ways. Strictly speaking, their documentation is here, but that's generated by docstrip, and not very useful for a relative beginner. I'd look instead at the LaTeX wikibook or one of the other resources for beginners listed here at LaTeX Community.

If you're a mathematician or math student, you might also be interested in the AMS versions of the standard classes, such as amsart and amsbook, which you can learn about here.

Between those and the various packages you can add, you can do most anything. There are few other classes that are worth knowing about just because of their power and flexibility, which include the memoir class and the KOMA script classes, which are highly customizable, and can be adapted for most purposes.

The only other document class that comes to mind personally as one that most all LaTeX users should know a little about is http://latex-beamer.sourceforge.net/beamer, which as far as I'm concerned, is the class to use in order to generating a presentation.

Personally I learn most of what I know about these things by browsing these forums here, often even when I have no particular reason to think I should know about something--you never know when it will be useful.