Texmaker and TeXstudioProblems compiling the legrand-template

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yakuelin
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon May 23, 2016 2:45 pm

Problems compiling the legrand-template

Post by yakuelin »

Hi all,
I am pretty new to LaTeX and after writing some own files, this is the first time I'm using a template. The Legrand-orange-book template looks amazing and i would like to use it.

However, I'm stuck right in the beginning. Sorry, if this is a very easy question. I'm working with TeXStudio.
% 1) pdflatex main
% 2) makeindex main.idx -s StyleInd.ist
% 3) biber main
% 4) pdflatex main x 2

I tried to run the commands as follows:
\pdflatex main
\makeindex main.idx -s StyleInd.ist
\biber main
\pdflatex main x 2

I get the errors:
Undefined control sequence

If I write e.g. main in braces, this doesn't work either.

Could you please give me a hint how to proceed?
Thanks a lot!
yakuelin

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Johannes_B
Site Moderator
Posts: 4182
Joined: Thu Nov 01, 2012 4:08 pm

Problems compiling the legrand-template

Post by Johannes_B »

Welcome, i advice on reading some basic introductory material and starting with some simple documents. A coomplex template is often hard to work with.


Once you know the basics, you know that you have to push the right buttons in your editor, instead of writing commands into your document. For texstudio, the default is to push F6 to compile with pdflatex.
The smart way: Calm down and take a deep breath, read posts and provided links attentively, try to understand and ask if necessary.
yakuelin
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon May 23, 2016 2:45 pm

Re: Problems compiling the legrand-template

Post by yakuelin »

Thank you for your help. I'll work further on getting deeper into the Latex-topic then.
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Stefan Kottwitz
Site Admin
Posts: 10348
Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2008 9:44 pm

Problems compiling the legrand-template

Post by Stefan Kottwitz »

Hi yakuelin,

welcome to the forum!

"Undefined control sequence" means, that a command is unknown. (Commands are called control sequences, simply said, and they start with backslash \).

In your case, you typed

\pdflatex main

but it's not the way pdfLaTeX is used. It's not a command within LaTeX. pdfLaTeX is the program for compiling (translating) LaTeX documents to PDF files. It's not written in a LaTeX document, but executed in a Windows shell or Linux shell for example. pdfLaTeX is the program. Besides that, most users don't even call it that way. As Johannes said, there are LaTeX editors where you just click a compiler (typeset, translate) button, and never call pdfLaTeX manually.

If you would have further questions after reading some introductory text, or if you would like to know reasons for this and that, just let us know.

Stefan
LaTeX.org admin
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