How to Write your Next Thesis in LaTeX

An International Webinar between Instituto Tecnológico de Morelia, Jade University of Applied Science and Óbuda University

Repository organization

The repository is organized in the next way. The 1_basics folder includes information (presentations or guides), examples source code, and any other useful information that the attendant can review during or after the webinar.

Webinar Contents

Here you can find the highlights of each day lecture, to avoid repetitive points during the webinar.

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Day 1: Introduction (Marx)

• What is LaTeX?
• How LaTeX works?
• Exploring Overleaf (Windows, organization, files)
• Compiling a basic document
• Using basic commands and definitions
• document options and geometry
• Defining new vars, paragraph spaces, tabulation space, and text sizes
• A dummy text definition command

Here are some basic but useful information about the eexamples and packages that we use during the webinar. If you require more deep information you can visit the links provided along the Readme file.

Example 1: Hello LaTeX

A basic example to test any LaTeX distribution is:

\documentclass{standalone}
\begin{document}
Hello \LaTeX{}
\end{document}

Example 2: Fonts and Styles

Latex Font Formats

Font formats, like bold or italics, are useful for highlight important text section by taking the reader's attention. Next are listed the most common used formats; if you need a detailed manual please look the LaTeX2e font selection manual.

Code	Notes
\textbf{}	for bold text
\textmd{}	for medium
\textit{}	for italics
\textsl{}	for slanted
\underline{}	for underline
\textsc{}	for small capital letters
\uppercase{}	for large capital letters
\textsuperscript{}	for raised text
\textsubscript{}	for lowered text
\texttt{}	for terminal text
\oldstylenums{}	for old number font

Example 3: Geometry and Lengths

Geometry package

The documents geometry can be handle by natural LaTeX commands. Howeever, there is a useful package to make it easier. The package is Geometry.

Units

The next table list the valid units used on LaTeX ¹.

Abbreviation	Value
pt	a point is approximately 1/72.27 inch, that means about 0.0138 inch or 0.3515 mm (exactly point is defined as 1/864 of American printer’s foot that is 249/250 of English foot)
mm	a millimeter
cm	a centimeter
in	inch
ex	roughly the height of an 'x' (lowercase) in the current font (it depends on the font used)
em	roughly the width of an 'M' (uppercase) in the current font (it depends on the font used)
mu	math unit equal to 1/18 em, where em is taken from the math symbols family

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Day 2: Document Classes and Sectional Units

Day 3: Equations, Tables and Figures (Marx)

Day 4: Plots with PGFPlots package(Marx)

• Making plots from equation
• Plotting data from a simple experiment
• Title, labels, and ticks configuration
• Multi-trace plots and its configuration
• Bar and scatter plots
• Reading data from a CSV files

Day 5: References with Bibtex (Kai)

What is a reference? What is a good reference?

• A simple reference Workflow with BibTEX
• Citation Styles
• Workflow Improvements
• Tools
  • BibTEX
  • JabRef
  • Citavi
  • Zotero

Certficates Feedback session

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1. Extracted from Overleaf ↩︎