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You're reading from  LaTeX Beginner's Guide - Second Edition

Product typeBook
Published inOct 2021
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781801078658
Edition2nd Edition
Tools
LaTeX
Concepts
Document Preparation
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Author (1)
Stefan Kottwitz
Stefan Kottwitz
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Stefan Kottwitz

Stefan Kottwitz studied mathematics in Jena and Hamburg. He works as a network and IT security engineer both for Lufthansa Industry Solutions and for Eurowings Aviation. For many years, he has been providing LaTeX support on online forums. He maintains the web forums LaTeX and goLaTeX and the Q&A sites TeXwelt and TeXnique. He runs the TeX graphics gallery sites TeXample, TikZ, and PGFplots, the TeXlive online compiler, the TeXdoc service, and the CTAN software mirror. He is a moderator of the TeX Stack Exchange site and matheplanet. He publishes ideas and news from the TeX world on his blogs LaTeX and TeX. Before this book, he authored the first edition of LaTeX Beginner's Guide in 2011, and LaTeX Cookbook in 2015, both published by Packt.
Read more about Stefan Kottwitz

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Chapter 14: Using Online Resources

There's a vast amount of LaTeX information and material on the internet, which has grown over many years. Today, thanks to the virtues of free and open-source software, a vast TeX and LaTeX community exists, sharing knowledge and expertise.

This chapter will guide you through the following resources on the internet:

  • Web forums, Q&A sites, and discussion boards
  • Lists of frequently asked questions
  • Mailing lists
  • TeX user groups sites
  • Websites for LaTeX software and editors
  • Graphics galleries
  • LaTeX blogs
  • Twitter messages

Many of the websites listed here are maintained by me and run on servers that are financially supported by DANTE e.V., the German-language TeX user group. A complete list of my websites is at https://latex.net/about.

As you know how to navigate the World Wide Web, this chapter does not contain practical examples. Instead, let's take a walk through the internet, beginning with...

Web forums, Q&A sites, and discussion boards

Let's go straight to where online life happens. We will start with forums.

Internet forums, or web forums, offer easy and user-friendly access to discussion and support groups. Initially, LaTeX was a topic in subforums of more general computer forums, among other software. After LaTeX became more and more popular, specific LaTeX websites were founded, some of which we will be discussing in the following sections.

LaTeX.org

Launched in January 2007, the web forum https://latex.org/ was the first web forum dedicated to LaTeX. It's split into various subforums, each dealing with a particular LaTeX topic, such as Math and Science or Fonts and Character Sets, with a certain LaTeX distribution or a specific LaTeX editor.

Participating is as easy as in any other web forum. You don't need to register for reading, as it's freely available. Just for writing, you need to register once, choosing a login name and a...

Lists of frequently asked questions

Now you know where to ask for help. However, during the long existence of online LaTeX communities, the probability that another user encountered the same problem as you is very high. There's a bunch of questions that appear again and again. If you post such a question, the community member might point you to a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page. This refers to a list of answers to these FAQs. The following websites host famous collections:

  • TeX FAQ: https://texfaq.org is an FAQ site maintained by the UK TeX Users' Group. It contains several hundred frequently asked questions and well-thought-out answers. They are sorted by topic, and that list is still growing and being continuously being improved.
  • Visual LaTeX FAQ: https://ctan.org/pkg/visualfaq is a very different approach. The Visual FAQ is a PDF document containing hundreds of textual and graphic elements such as tables, figures, lists, footnotes, and math formulas....

Mailing lists

Now we come again to a traditional media: electronic mailing lists. They are used for both announcements and discussions. If you subscribe to such a list, you will receive announcements and discussion contributions from other subscribers. You could silently receive and read all the messages, and you could send e-mails to the list address, which would then be sent to all other subscribers. Before sending a general query to the list of subscribers, you should check an FAQ list.

Today, many people prefer easily accessible media, such as web forums. However, mailing lists still exist and will be in use as long as e-mail is popular. The following mailing lists may be handy for you:

TeX user group sites

TeX user groups are organizations for people interested in TeX and LaTeX. They provide support for their members but also for TeX and LaTeX users in general. Let's visit a few.

The TeX Users Group

The TeX Users Group (TUG) is a not-for-profit organization with a very long history. Their website is at https://tug.org. Founded in 1980, the TUG always had a significant influence on the development and popularity of TeX. The TUG home page is a portal to the TeX world with links to support, documentation, and software. It hosts an extensive collection of TeX-related internet resources at https://tug.org/interest.html. An index and a substantial number of links show you the way to helpful material on the internet.

It publishes a journal that appears three times a year, and it holds yearly international conferences. It also hosts the LaTeX Font Catalogue at https://tug.org/FontCatalogue, which lists nearly all fonts available for use with LaTeX. About a...

Websites for LaTeX software and editors

Like most software manufacturers and distributors, free and open-source software projects offer information on their home pages.

LaTeX distributions

Today, there are two big LaTeX distributions, both very modern and comprehensive, plus some descendants:

  • TeX Live: https://tug.org/texlive is a cross-platform LaTeX software collection. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other Unix systems.
  • MiKTeX: https://miktex.org is a very user-friendly and popular LaTeX distribution specifically for the Windows operating system. It now supports Linux and other Unix systems as well.
  • proTeXt: https://tug.org/protext is a MiKTeX-based distribution for Windows that primarily focuses on easy installation.
  • MacTeX: https://tug.org/mactex is derived from TeX Live and has been explicitly customized for Mac OS X.

Most Linux versions provide a customized version of TeX Live in their repositories.

LaTeX editors

There are many...

Graphics galleries

There are showcase sites on the internet, especially for creating graphics with TeX:

These websites allow visual browsing through LaTeX graphics documents sorted by topic and with complete source code and explanations.

Now let's get personal; we will now turn to user blogs.

LaTeX blogs

Are you interested in LaTeX news and expert opinions? Then LaTeX blogs may supply you with current LaTeX information:

  • https://texblog.net is my personal blog. Here, I write LaTeX-related news, offer tips and tricks, and provide a structured link collection sorted by subject.
  • https://www.texdev.net is written by Joseph Wright, a member of the LaTeX project and author of various LaTeX tools.
  • https://tex-talk.net/ is a LaTeX blog with an interesting section full of interviews with LaTeX power users and developers.
  • https://latex.net is mainly an article database with know-how accumulated over many years, but it also provides news posts like a blog.
  • http://texample.net/community is a blog aggregator that summarizes about 30 TeX and LaTeX-related blogs and will keep you updated.
  • https://planet.dante.de is a DANTE-hosted blog aggregator that focuses on German LaTeX related blogs but includes international blogs.

But even faster news is on Twitter...

Twitter messages

Recommended Twitter accounts to subscribe to are as follows:

Follow the hashtag #TeXLaTeX to get the latest news about TeX and LaTeX: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23TeXLaTeX.

Summary

While you have learned about the LaTeX fundamentals in this book, this chapter gave an overview about further reading online.

Now you know about finding and downloading LaTeX software, accessing the worldwide LaTeX community knowledge, getting the latest news from blogs, and asking questions online if you encounter any problem that you cannot solve by yourself.

TeX friends will welcome you on any community website. As you have learned much in this book, you may soon become an experienced LaTeX user who supports LaTeX novices.

Hi!

I’m Stefan, author of LaTeX Beginner’s Guide. I hope you enjoyed reading this book and found it helpful in using LaTeX. We had the first edition in 2011, and now we have the second edition in 2021, rewritten with a view on the newest developments. LaTeX forever! I look forward to a 2031 edition – just joking, that can be earlier. Stay tuned with upcoming developments at https://latexguide.org.

It would really...

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Author (1)

author image
Stefan Kottwitz

Stefan Kottwitz studied mathematics in Jena and Hamburg. He works as a network and IT security engineer both for Lufthansa Industry Solutions and for Eurowings Aviation. For many years, he has been providing LaTeX support on online forums. He maintains the web forums LaTeX and goLaTeX and the Q&A sites TeXwelt and TeXnique. He runs the TeX graphics gallery sites TeXample, TikZ, and PGFplots, the TeXlive online compiler, the TeXdoc service, and the CTAN software mirror. He is a moderator of the TeX Stack Exchange site and matheplanet. He publishes ideas and news from the TeX world on his blogs LaTeX and TeX. Before this book, he authored the first edition of LaTeX Beginner's Guide in 2011, and LaTeX Cookbook in 2015, both published by Packt.
Read more about Stefan Kottwitz

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