Latex Beamer

http://www.math-linux.com has provided a blog posting telling us
How to make a presentation with Latex – Introduction to Beamer. Which is useful if you want to do that.

Now I know how to use columns, Woohoo!

Equations in graphics editor, LaTeX/Inkscape

Graphics editor Inkscape can understand Latex equations, using a plugin. This plugin seems pretty standard, it was installed in the inkscape version that is installed by debian package manager (debian squeeze). A message came on the screen the first time, and asked me to install a dependency (python-lxml) after that it works…. I can have equations (and greek letters easily!)

Now you can have beautiful equations and greek letters from LaTeX and insert them easily in re-scalable vector graphics images. They will match the text of your latex document.

End of advert.

Detextify – Find latex symbols

This website (http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html) is really useful if you don’t know the markup/command for the LaTex symbol you want to write. Provided you are able to draw it.

href=”http://bainite.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/detexify.png”>

Detexify

The website talks about the software learning how to recognise the symbols so I guess it is using some neural network scheme.

Optimising your pdf file – latex dvips ps2pdf

For those wanting to distribute latex documents in pdf file format, it is possible to leave all optimisation of the file to the last step.

latex command generates dvi file.

dvips command generates ps file

ps2pdf command generates pdf file.

ps2pdf has a lot of possible options for file optimisation. The option -dPDFSETTINGS=
provides several sets of defaults to generate output similar to the acrobat distiller program in windows and mac (of course in linux you also have flexibility to specify every other option too if you wanted).

For example;

ps2pdf file.ps file.pdf generates big file

ps2pdf -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen file.ps file_screenoptimised.pdf generates small file suitable for reading on computer screen only

ps2pdf -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook file.ps file_ebookoptimised.pdf generates slightly larger file with higher resolution graphics suitable for ebook readers

David Mackay on Latex

David MacKay has been interviewed by TUG (Tex Users Group), in interview dated to February 2009. Check it out if you are a fan of David or LaTeX.

David Says;

LaTeX is the typesetting program to use in scientific publishing.

David MacKay’s website has some LaTeX stuff.

Looks like David MacKay FRS also has a blog, and another blog.