Introductions

An Introduction to LaTeX

• Handout: PDF (Postscript).
• The slides — always available at:
  • http://ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk/~simonh/

ITS Research Support

Research Support in IT Services

Contrast:

• IT Services for Teaching and Learning
• and Uni Business Systems

Research Support in IT Services

IT Services for Research 1/2

• Specialist part of IT Services
• Comprises members of each Faculty IT team. . .
• . . .plus the Research Infrastructure (RI) Team and Research Applications (RAC) teams in the centre.

Email contact details:

• RI: its-ri-team@manchester.ac.uk
• Faculty IT teams:

      eps-itresearch@manchester.ac.uk
      fls
      hum
      mhs

• RAC — to be advertised

Research Support in IT Services

IT Services for Research 2/2

We support computationally-intensive research:

Offer help with and advice on:

• running complex simulations on a computer (including parallel);
• performing vast parameter searches;
• handling large data sets;
• computer programming, LaTeX. . .

Research Support in IT Services

Research Computing Examples

High Throughput Computing (HTC)

• Large amounts of comp. power over a "long" time:
  • Running long jobs!
  • Running the same experiment many (1000s) times, with different inputs.

High Performance Computing (HPC)

• Large amounts of comp. power over a "short" time:
  • many CPUs simultaneously to run complex models quicker.
• Many compute-nodes' RAM simultaneously to handle very big jobs.

Data Analysis and Visualization

• Getting the information out of the vast quantities of data.

Research Support in IT Services

How can we help you? (1/2)

Provision of Research Infrastructure:

• Computational Shared Facility (CSF, aka Danzek),
  • iCSF (aka Incline), Redqueen, Zrek. . .
• Condor pools
• The Research Data Service

Support and Training:

• Documentation — Web and Wiki.
• Courses!
• Usage of HPC/HTC (inc. Condor) clusters,
• application support.

Research Support in IT Services

How can we help you? (2/2)

Advice and in-depth support:

• optimisation of models/code — speed up!
• parallelisation of code, or
• advanced use of HTC (inc. Condor).

Research Support in IT Services

Other Related Courses

Using computational facilities:

• HTC and Condor
• Using the CSF (and Redqueen. . .)
• Linux

Miscellaneous:

• Intro to LaTeX.

Programming:

• Matlab
• Fortran 95
• Parallel programming (e.g., OpenMP and MPI, OpenCL)

Today's Course

This Course

Course Overview

One day

A one day course, 10:00 – 16:00:

• four "lectures";
• three practical/hands-on sessions;
• the middle hands-on session will be combined with lunch.

Linux plus GUI, Linux plus commandline, or laptop

• Desktop machines here dual-boot but LaTeX available on only Linux;
• use Kile LaTeX GUI — or favourite editor plus commandline;
• use your own laptop if you wish.

What is LaTeX?

So, what is LaTeX?

What is TeX?

A typesetting system — not a word-processor:

• a special purpose programming language;
• a very powerful system — superficially more complex than word-processors.

Both harder and easier:

• Steep learning curve — but LaTeX allows you to ignore the tech details 99% of the time
• Harder to do easy things but easier to do hard things!

Why use LaTeX?

High Quality and Flexibility

• Produces truly high-quality technical manuscripts.
• Almost zero chance of corrupt document.
  • LaTeX is stored as ASCII text, not binary.
• Lets you work the way you want to work:
  • on your favourite platform/OS;
  • with a choice of GUIs —
  • or with your favourite editor and the CLI.

More:

• Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient by Allin Cottrell

Why use LaTeX? Compatibility

The formatting is messed up. . .

• Enforced, costly upgrades (.doc to .docx).
• MS Word and Powerpoint are infamous for compatibility/formatting problems
  • different versions; different platforms/OS.
  • proprietory format — OpenOffice does its best, but. . .
• Leads to problems:
  • Two or three people working on a journal article/paper;
  • presentation nightmares!
• LaTeX produces identical results on MS Windowz, Linux and OS-X.
  • Example: highly professional presentation produced by using Beamer.

Why use LaTeX? Mathematics

Second to None for Typesetting Mathematics

• MS Word:
  • difficult and time-consuming to construction non-trivial equations and formulae;
  • poor quality output — not publication-quality.
• [La]TeX:
  • state-of-the-art;
  • easy!

True Publication Quality

• Many journals use (La)TeX
• J. Phys. A: Math. Gen., 32, 3255 – 3269: PDF (Postscript).

Why use LaTeX? FOSS

LaTeX is Free and Open Source (GPL)

As a consequence:

• free (as in beer) to download and install;
• many extensions: ChemTeX, MusicTeX, graphics. . .
• available on all platforms/OS: MS Windows (MiKTeX), Unix/Linux (TeX Live), Apple/OS-X (MacTeX), Solaris. . .
• guaranteed to be available everywhere: home, work, other institutions. . .

Fundamentals

In this module we describe:

• LaTeX source files
• The edit, compile, view cycle
• GUIs
• Commandline LaTeX
• Warnings and Errors

The LaTeX Language

In this module we describe:

• Special characters.
• The structure of a LaTeX document.
• Document classes (stylesheets/templates).
• LaTeX environments (lists, tables. . .).
• Sections, subsectionsAccents and special symbols.

Mathematics

In this module we describe:

• Inline and displayed mathematics
• Equation arrays
• Labelling and Referencing Equations
• Where to find more examples

Including Graphics in TeX

In this module we describe:

• How to include images (JPEG, PNG, TIFF. . .) in LaTeX documents.
• Where to find out more.

BibTeX

In this module we describe:

• The BibTeX database.
• Using a BibTeX database — citations.
• Compiling with BibTeX.
• BibTeX styles.
• BibTeX and Endnote.

Presentations

In this module we describe:

• Basic document structure;
• revealing things incrementally;
• creating accompanying notes.

Support and Documentation

In this module we describe:

• IT Services;
• Faculty IS teams.

• Freely-downloadable distributions;
• books;
• on-line documentation;
• user-groups;
• UoM email list.

Odds and Ends

Here. . .