Introduction to Scientific Typesetting
Lesson 15: Software to Help with LATEX
Ryan Higginbottom
January 25, 2012
1
An Overview
An Overview
LaTable
LaTable
LaTeXDraw
LaTeXDraw
2
An Overview
LaTable
The Problem of
Spreadsheets
The Options
LaTable
Strengths and
Weaknesses of
LaTable
Practice!
LaTable
LaTeXDraw
3
The Problem of Spreadsheets
An Overview
There are situations you can imagine where some data that you
LaTable
The Problem of
want in a document or presentation is contained in a spreadsheet.
Spreadsheets
The Options
LaTable
Strengths and
But—in terms of how the text is entered—the tabular or array
Weaknesses of
LaTable environments are much different than spreadsheets!
Practice!
LaTeXDraw
We need a way to get spreadsheet stuff into LATEX.
4
The Options
An Overview
There are two main options of which I’m aware.
LaTable
The Problem of
Spreadsheets 1. The Excel2LaTeX Macro for Microsoft Excel.
The Options
LaTable
Highlight a range of cells in an Excel spreadsheet, click a
Strengths and button, and get LATEX code.
Weaknesses of
LaTable
Practice!
◮ Positive: does nice job with text decorations (bold, italics)
LaTeXDraw ◮ Negative: some inconsistent behavior with cell borders
and cell justifications, can only generate code for
tabular
Check out the spreadsheet [Link] and
[Link] files.
2. The LaTable program.
5
LaTable
An Overview
LaTable reads comma separated value (.csv) files.
LaTable
The Problem of
Spreadsheets
The Options Convert Excel file to .csv format, then open in LaTable.
LaTable
Strengths and
Weaknesses of
LaTable
Let’s practice with spreadsheet [Link] .
Practice!
LaTeXDraw
6
Strengths and Weaknesses of LaTable
An Overview
Strengths
LaTable
The Problem of Can edit cells so that code comes out cleaner
Spreadsheets
The Options Does a great job with cell justification and cell borders
LaTable
Strengths and
Merged cells (across columns) also show up well
Weaknesses of
LaTable
Can export to LATEX code as tabular, array, or any
Practice! custom environment
LaTeXDraw
Weaknesses
Cannot do text decorations
Cannot merge cells across rows
7
Practice!
An Overview
Take the spreadsheet [Link] file and, using
LaTable
The Problem of LaTable, reproduce the second example file (.pdf).
Spreadsheets
The Options
LaTable
Strengths and
Weaknesses of
LaTable
Practice!
LaTeXDraw
8
An Overview
LaTable
LaTeXDraw
Difficulty with
pstricks
Using LaTeXDraw
First Example
Including Drawings as
Images LaTeXDraw
Lots of Options
Practice!
Why Use Anything
Else?
9
Difficulty with pstricks
An Overview
Let’s face it—sometimes pstricks can be pretty difficult to use.
LaTable
LaTeXDraw
Difficulty with
pstricks There are several programs which allow you to draw and generate
Using LaTeXDraw pstricks code which you can paste into LATEX.
First Example
Including Drawings as
Images
Lots of Options LaTeXDraw is one such program.
Practice!
Why Use Anything
Else?
10
Using LaTeXDraw
An Overview
This is a fairly amazing program, which allows to you draw all types
LaTable
of shapes.
LaTeXDraw
Difficulty with
pstricks squares and rectangles
Using LaTeXDraw
First Example circles and ellipses
Including Drawings as
Images
Lots of Options
dots, lines, polygons
Practice!
Why Use Anything arcs and curves
Else?
grids and axes
text
free-hand drawings!
11
First Example
An Overview
Open LaTeXDraw and then open the [Link] file.
LaTable
LaTeXDraw
Difficulty with We will take the generated pstricks code and build a .pdf file
pstricks
Using LaTeXDraw from this.
First Example
Including Drawings as You’ll need to add a few lines of code to make a .tex file that will
Images
Lots of Options build:
Practice!
Why Use Anything \documentclass{article}
Else?
\begin{document} and \end{document}
Uncomment the four \usepackage{...} lines.
By the nature of the generated code, these drawings are really easy
to scale. Just change the number in the \scalebox{#} line.
12
Including Drawings as Images
An Overview
LaTeXDraw has a really great feature that allows you to use it with
LaTable
the LaTeX => PDF build profile. (Remember: pstricks requires
LaTeXDraw
Difficulty with
the LaTeX => PS => PDF profile.)
pstricks
Using LaTeXDraw
First Example Draw something and click on the Adobe button toward the upper left
Including Drawings as
Images of the menu bar. You’ll get a PDF file which is just as big as the
Lots of Options
Practice!
pictures you’ve drawn.
Why Use Anything
Else?
Now include this in a document using the graphicx package and
the \includegraphics command.
An alternative: under the “File--Export as...” menu option
the picture can be exported as a .jpg or any other image file
format. This also allows inclusion in a document using the
LaTeX => PDF build profile.
13
Lots of Options
An Overview
Let’s look closely at a few of the many things to customize when
LaTable
drawing with LaTeXDraw.
LaTeXDraw
Difficulty with
pstricks The colors associated with a geometric object.
Using LaTeXDraw
The many options associated with a text box.
First Example
Including Drawings as The many options associated with axes/grids.
Images
Lots of Options
Practice!
Why Use Anything
Else?
14
Practice!
An Overview
Open the third example file (.pdf).
LaTable
LaTeXDraw
Difficulty with
pstricks
Use LaTeXDraw and include pstricks code into a .tex
Using LaTeXDraw
First Example document to reproduce it.
Including Drawings as
Images
Lots of Options
Practice!
Why Use Anything
Else?
15
Why Use Anything Else?
An Overview
In my view, this is a nice quick way to do some things—particularly
LaTable
free-hand drawing.
LaTeXDraw
Difficulty with
pstricks
But for things like function graphs and node/node connections,
Using LaTeXDraw
First Example writing the code by hand is still the way to go.
Including Drawings as
Images
Lots of Options
Practice!
Why Use Anything
Else?
16