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   LaTeX Tutorial
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Hopefully this tutorial on LaTeX will guide anyone who is not familiar with LaTeX to write up a conference paper by learning some useful LaTeX commands.

Paper Structure & LaTeX Commands

[TABLE : Document Structure]

Category

Subcategory

LaTex statement

Comment

Declarations

Style

\documentclass[]{}

Document style

Package

\usepackage{epsfig}

Extra package inclusion

Margins

\setlength{\textwidth}{}

Width of the whole text

\setlength{\textheight}{}

Height of the whole text

\setlength{\topmargin}{}

1.in+topmargin is the total top margin

\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{}

1.in+oddsidemargin is the total left side margin (of odd page)

\setlength{\evensidemargin}{}

1.in+evensidemargin is the total left side margin (of even page)

\setlength{\parindent}{}

the paragraph indentation

\setlength{\parskip}{}

the extra vertical space inserted before a paragraph

Commands

\newcommand{\ignore}[1]{}

Block comments

Body

Begin

\begin{document}

Starting of the document body

Set styles

\bibliographystyle{}

Set the bibliography style

\pagestyle{}

Page style definition such as page numbering

\thispagestyle{}

Set the current page style

Title info

\title{}

Title of the paper

\author{}

Authors

Make Title

\maketitle

Display the title, author, etc. information

Abstract

\begin{abstract}

 

\end{abstract}

 

Sections

\section{}

Starting of a section

\subsection{}

Starting of a subsection

\subsubsection{}

Starting of a subsubsection

Bibliography

\bibliography{}

Load the bibliography

End

\end{document}

End document

[TABLE : Useful commands]

Category

LaTeX statement

Comment

Enumerator

\begin{enumerate}

Use \item to indicate the starting a new item

\end{enumerate}

Comment

%

Comment

Reference

\cite{}

Reference

Mathematical formula

$ something $
e.g. $ n \geq 1 $

\( something \)
\begin{math}something \end{math}

Line breaker

\\

 

Page breaker

\newpage

 

Figure

\ref{fig:fig_ref}[placement]

 

\begin{figure}
\centering
\epsfig{figure=tuto.eps, height=1.4in, width=1.0in}
\caption{\label{fig:fig_ref}Title}
\end{figure}

Placement

h

Here - at the position in the text where the figure environment appears.

t

Top - at the top of a text page

b

Bottom - at the bottom of a text page

p

Page of floats - on a separate float page, which is a page containing no text, only floats.       

Indentation

\noindent

No indentation

Verbatim environment

\begin{verbatim}

gets LaTeX to print exactly what you type in

\end{verbatim}

 

Quotation

`this'

 

Font faces

\rm{}

Roman. .

\it{}

Italics.

\em{}

Emphasis (toggles between \it and \rm).

\bf{}

Boldface.

\sl{}

Slanted.

\sf{}

Sans serif.

\sc{}

Small caps

\tt{}

Typewriter

Font sizes

\tiny{}
\scriptsize{}
\footnotesize{}
\small{}
\normalsize{}
\large{}
\Large{}
\LARGE{}
\huge{}
\Huge{}

 

Footnote

\footnote{}

 

Spacing

\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{#}
\tiny
\normalsize

# : Use 1.6 for double spacing and 1 for single spacing

Necessary Files

The minimum file you need is a LaTeX file (tex).
However your LaTeX file may need a bibliography file (bib) that contains all the references.
Frequently a specific style file (sty) or a class file (cls) is required to be used (e.g. acl.cls, llncs.cls, latex8.sty, aaai.sty, colacl.sty)
Also some conferences ask you to use a specific bibliography style file (bst) to format the references in a particular way (e.g. acl.bst)

Goal

In this tutorial, a LaTeX file (tuto.tex) uses a bibliography file (tuto.bib) to include the references and a figure file (tuto.eps) to draw an image. Our goal is to generate the final pdf file (tuto.pdf) of this tex file. You can download all these files in a zip file (tuto.zip).

Execution

Once you have all these files, copy them under any directory on a UNIX machine and execute the following commands.

// 1. generate tuto.dvi file
latex tuto.tex
// 2. combine the references
bibtex tuto
// 3. reflect the references in the dvi file
latex tuto.tex
// 4. really reflect the references in the dvi file
latex tuto.tex
// 5. convert tuto.dvi to tuto.ps
dvips -o tuto.ps tuto.dvi
// 6. convert tuto.ps to tuto.pdf
ps2pdf tuto.ps tuto.pdf

Execute the commands from 1 to 6 whenever you make changes in bib file later on.
Otherwise just execute the commands from 4 through 6 to reflect the changes in the tex file.

NOTE : if you get any errors during above executions, you might want to check if your .cshrc file (working cshrc file as of 07/04/02) is correct/up-to-date (such as the paths to the right TEX files).
Compare the result tuto.pdf file with the original tuto.tex file to understand how each LaTeX command works.

Other Stuffs

Here are the tex files and pdf files from some of my papers : FLAIRS (tex, pdf), SESEC (tex, pdf)
My Ph.D. proposal paper (prop.pdf-333KB) is written in Latex and here is its source files (prop.zip-138KB) that I used for my Ph.D. candidacy test (Ph.D. LEVEL II exam). Also here is my dissertaton (dst.pdf-2,359KB), its source files (dst.zip-133KB), its image files (dst_img.zip-2,069KB), and spacing and margins snapshot files (dst_space.zip-376KB). Although I made some changes, I'd like to give the proper credit to Jame Wu for his great initial work on the format and style.
Some LaTex Help links : A Guide to LaTeX, LaTeX help 1.1, Hypertext Help with LaTeX, Online tutorials on LaTeX

That's all, folks!
-Rom.