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LaTeX

Setup​

I used to write with the excellent Texifier but have switched to VSCode and the LaTeX Workshop plugin. You will need TinyTeX installed.

# Install TinyTeX. Note that this may require Superuser privs since the
# binary ends up in /usr/local/bin
curl -sL "https://yihui.org/tinytex/install-bin-unix.sh" | sh

# Optional: Restart shell or open a new session. Now install some packages.
# Errors on a few ones. Fix later.
tlmgr install amsmath adjustbox algorithm algpseudocode amsfonts amsthm changepage csquotes empheq fontawesome fullpage graphicx,booktabs,array graphicx,subcaption,titlesec hyperref longtable multicol multirow tabularx tikz

Fire up VSCode and create a new .tex document. Adapt the document template below, pick "SyncTeX from Cursor" in the command palette1 to see live-previews! 🤩

You can now configure your environment as much as you'd like based on this excellent article.

Formatting​

Makes your TeX files more readable (especially tables and lists!). On macOS, install LaTeX Indent via brew install latexindent2. Then go to your VSCode Settings and add this:

{
  "latex-workshop.formatting.latex": "latexindent"
}

References and Resources​

My Document Template​

\documentclass[twoside,11pt]{article}

% Set some margins, set the typeface, do not indent paragraphs,
% adjust paragraph line heights.
\usepackage[margin=0.75in]{geometry}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
\setlength{\parindent}{0em}
\setlength{\parskip}{0.75em}

\usepackage{amsmath, amsfonts, amsthm}
\begin{document}

% =============================================================

\begin{center}
  {\LARGE \textbf{Homework I}}\\[0.5em]
  {\large Nikhil Anand (\texttt{XY1122})}\\[0.5em]
  \textit{Submitted \today}
\end{center}

\noindent\rule{\textwidth}{0.5pt}

% =============================================================

% Here be content...

% ======================= REFERENCES ==========================

% Equation. Entire block numbered.
\begin{equation}
  \begin{aligned}
    E          & = mc^2                              \\
    \implies E & = \sum_{x=2}^{\infty}\frac{y^x}{x!} \\
    F          & = ma                                \\
    F          & = ma                                \\
    F          & = ma                                \\
  \end{aligned}
\end{equation}

% Equation. Selective labeling.
\begin{align}
  E  & = mc^2 \label{eq:einstein} \\
  F  & = ma   \nonumber           \\
  pV & = nRT \label{eq:ideal_gas}
\end{align}

% Tables
\begin{table}[h!]
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{|l c |r|}
    \hline
    Constant               & Symbol & Value                                             \\
    \hline
    Speed of light         & $c$    & $3.00 \times 10^8 \,\text{m/s}$                   \\
    Gravitational constant & $G$    & $6.67 \times 10^{-11} \,\text{N m}^2/\text{kg}^2$ \\
    Planck constant        & $h$    & $6.63 \times 10^{-34} \,\text{J s}$               \\
    \hline
  \end{tabular}
  % Label should go right after Caption
  \caption{Physical constants used in the experiments}
  \label{tab:constants}
\end{table}

% Refer to Equations with \eqref{} and Tables with \ref{}

% =============================================================

\end{document}

Footnotes​

  1. Cmd+Shift+p on macOS and Ctrl+Shift+p on poorer platforms. ↩

  2. There's [tex-fmt](https://github.com/WGUNDERWOOD/tex-fmt) that's written in Rust but it doesn't do tables well. ↩