LaTeX Document Preparation

Contribution

• Set up LaTeX environment
• Drastically improved the workflow to automize the process from finding literature, managing literature, and embedding and using literature within LaTeX

Why did I choose LaTeX?

Working with LaTeX is quite a challenge at the beginning. One can spend hours and days learning it and fixing simple issues that can be done in a word processing software like Libre Office or Microsoft Word in seconds. So why would someone ever start writing in LaTeX? Yes, it is a steep learning curve, however, as soon as the system is up and running it works smoothly and the advantages come to play.

When I worked for my master thesis and for the research project CrAc – Cooperative Activities I set up the workflow the following easy and efficient way:

• Find interesting article/reference online
• Click a single button in the browser to add the article including PDF, and all the necessary metadata into my Zotero library
• Automatic export after each change within the Zotero library (export as BibTeX file and automatic overwriting in the LaTeX project folder)
• Immediately have access to the reference and cite command from my preferred LaTeX editor
• Compile & run the LaTeX project and get the ready-to-print PDF including the entire list of references

Advantages of LaTeX

1. Professional typesetting
2. Best output
3. It is the standard for scientific documents
4. Processing mathematical (& other) symbols
5. Meaning-based structuring (rather than appearance)
6. Knowledgeable and helpful user group
7. It is free!
8. Platform independent
9. Professionally crafted layouts are available, which make a document really look as if printed
10. Users only need to learn a few easy-to-understand commands that specify the logical structure of a document. They almost never need to tinker with the actual layout of the document.
11. Even complex structures such as footnotes, references, table of contents, and bibliographies can be generated easily.
12. Free add-on packages exist for many typographical tasks not directly supported by basic LaTeX. For example, packages are available to include PostScript graphics or to typeset bibliographies conforming to exact standards.
13. LaTeX encourages authors to write well-structured texts because this is how LaTeX works – by specifying structure.
14. TEX, the formatting engine of LaTeX, is highly portable and free, therefore the system runs on almost any hardware platform available.