LaTex is THE
BEST DTP solution available today. LaTex is the de facto
standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents
(with the exceptions of some non-self respecting conferences and
journals). In order to produce any document in LaTex you need the
following tools:
A LaTex distribution:
- MikTex
(recommended choice for Windows)
- Tex
Live (both Unix, Linux, MacOS X, and Windows)
Any text editor, even the simplest one can do the job. Personally I
would suggest either:
- WinEdt
- closed source but very good tool
- TeXnicCenter
- open source, I used this one when I
was using Windows
- Texmaker -
Linux oriented; get it through apt-get install texmaker
- GNU Texmacs -
This is a very powerful editor that can be used as GUI for a variety of
Linux scientific packages such as Scilab, Octave, R and Maxima
A good diagram editor:
- Dia
- Drawing program
- Inkscape
- Vector graphics editor
- XY-pic
- Gimp -
Not for diagrams but more of an image editor
Some LaTex manuals:
After installing a LaTex distribution and an editor you should have a system that is 100% functional.
To test that your installation is functional open the following file (Virus free; this is a *.tex file) and
compile or build it. You will get either the following file (*.dvi) or file
(*.pdf) depending on the compilation options. If your result looks like the one
provided here then you are ready to continue working with LaTex.
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