r/LaTeX

My mother needs to create some professional documents and by god can’t handle word or complex instructions.

Showed her Latex but i use overleaf over my university and don’t think its free to use (?)

Wanted her to use Latex due to chatgpt (which she uses ans knows how to use good enough) being good at giving you latex source code and troubleshoot problems also it is imo pretty intuitive to use.

Are there any editors that are free to use and give you the source code and the document on a screen like overleaf does?

Update: 2h for 10 docs each 5 pages fully formatted and good looking written in overleaf by her with help of chatgpt to format only explaining it once and reminding her of \noindent and \newpage.

She said it the dual screen setup and command type writing is ok at least she doesn’t need to search for shit.
“It almost makes fun” she is literally the first person to say that and i got nothing to add but my trauma shouldn’t be her aesthetic.

So i recently switched to mint after using windows my entire life. I have always used excel and word for all types of writing. Now i am learning LaTeX. I am pretty comfortable with the text formatting and stuff so far. Now i need to include some graphs. I already have them made in my previous work and i want to import them to LaTeX.

I searched online and this are a few methods that i found.

1. Use excel to make graphs, export as pdf then convert it to eps. Gotta look out for formatting before export and need windows. So kind of an issue

2. Have the data in an xlsx/ods file. Use matplotlib to plot graphs and export as eps. Gotta learn pandas a bit but dont need windows. Can use GNUplot as well.

3. Use tikz. Not recommended immediately as it has a steep learning curve.

I just wanted to know if this are the only workflow people use for making papers. I just feel like this is a bit more work. I feel like word + excel copy and paste was pretty convenient. I dont have any issue in learning new stuff. This is my first time writing an actual paper for a journal. So i just want to make sure that i am not unnecessarily making my work longer. Any help is very appreciated.

Edit: Thanks again to everyone. After reading all the comments, i have decided to learn python and make graphs there. I plan to learn tikz at a later date. Thanks again. I learned quite a few things today.

Hi there,

I just had a look at the microtype documentation and was very astound by the interactive parts (page 3 and 16).

How the hack do you pull something like this off, let alone in LaTeX?

Image of table

Hi, I have a table here and i want "Strictly Confidential" to be written on two lines so it doesnt have the hyphen in the middle of confidential, but cant find anything when googling or GPT-ing.

I could change the width of that column but it looks kind of ugly when its so tiny so i was hoping there was some other way

Below is the full table:

\begin{table}[H]
\centering
\caption{Information classification levels used in the dataset}
\label{tab:classification_levels}
\begin{tabular}{|p{2.25cm}|p{4.55cm}|p{4cm}|}
\hline
\textbf{Classification} & \textbf{Description} & \textbf{Example Information} \\ \hline

\textbf{Strictly Confidential} &
Information that should only be shared with a strictly limited list of recipients. Unauthorized disclosure may result in severe consequences such as financial loss, reputational damage, or breaches of laws and regulations. &
Insider information, unpublished financial results, banking secrecy information, sensitive personal data \\ \hline

\textbf{Confidential} &
Information that should only be shared with a limited list of recipients. Unauthorized disclosure may lead to negative business consequences or regulatory issues. &
Salary information, supplier information, business contracts, personal data, production code \\ \hline

\textbf{Internal} &
Information primarily intended for internal use within the Bank but which may occasionally be shared externally if required. Unauthorized disclosure may lead to minor consequences. &
Internal communication, governance documents, work-related operational information \\ \hline

\textbf{Public} &
Information intended for external parties or the general public. Disclosure of this information has no negative consequences for the Bank. &
Publicly available information, press material, recruitment and career information \\ \hline

\end{tabular}
\end{table}

Screenshot of MathDraft

I didn't study mathematics in college, but I've developed an interest in it in recent years. Over the past year, I’ve been reading What Is Mathematics? by Courant and Robbins, and I often found myself wanting to take clearer notes while working through the ideas, formulas, diagrams, and examples.

But general note-taking apps never felt quite right for this kind of work. Writing formulas was often awkward, plotting functions required switching tools, and exporting notes with math content cleanly was not always easy.

So I started building MathDraft in my spare time.

I worked on it after work and on some weekends. After about 9 months, I recently released the first version on the Mac App Store.

I embedded the MathLive formula input library into the app, so users can take advantage of its powerful features to enter formulas more easily, including real-time visual editing, LaTeX autocomplete, a rich symbol keyboard, and more.

DEMO:

Real-time visual editing

Quick insertion

Symbol Keyboard

https://preview.redd.it/ix1v7pdpl12h1.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c661ee60ae0e6d373326f5c6932ba3949046c3e1

I also added function plotting. The app uses SymPy to sample and plot functions, which lets it support many different types of expressions.

https://preview.redd.it/iiqn5s9rl12h1.png?width=2880&format=png&auto=webp&s=d8d0f15a2ff29debe9a288fa97bd16c024ddae38

In addition, I personally like the feeling of paper, so I added PDF export to the app. It can generate clean PDF notes that can be printed, annotated, and preserved for future reference.

I’ve released it on the Mac App Store for $3.99, and I hope some of you may find it useful.

Here is the project website: https://www.mathdraft.art/

Basically the title. Today I tried writing a new report for one of my labs only to notice that vscode refuses to compile that project or any other older project that previously worked perfectly fine.

I hadn't change anything to my settings, yet both my pc and laptop started having the same issue. What is weirder is that I used vscode to write a latex report with no problems last week, so im sure this change appeared almost overnight.

So far I've encountered the following:

• spawn latexmk ENOENT errors
• errors with \input -ing .tex files which are outside the root directory yet are still in the workspace (something i've done countless times before and had no problems with)
• and now vscode is straight up refusing to compile any code, even the most basic one

i've tried everything i could think of/i found on the internet, even reinstalling strawberry perl and miktex, yet the issue still persists.

has anyone experienced anything remotely similar or has any idea what i could try? thanks

UPDATE: turns out, it really was a latex workshop update that somehow messed up my setup. i got my projects to recompile once i installed an older version of latex workshop.

the only problem left is that the autocomplete no longer suggests .tex files outside the subfolder im currently working in (now it only suggests files inside the subfolder im in), which is really obnoxious since i have many subfolders i work with and that featured streamlined my work flow

I’m feeling really stuck and honestly a bit discouraged.

I built a website with real functionality that anyone can use for free. I’m not even charging users. I’ve also written a lot of blog content around the site, trying to make it genuinely useful.

But the problem is: almost nothing seems to work for SEO.

I created backlinks and profiles on platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Crunchbase, and other company/profile listing sites. But Google doesn’t even seem to index most of these backlinks. I spent a lot of time creating content and external profiles, but they don’t appear to help at all.

Even worse, my own domain name barely ranks. When I search for my exact website/domain keyword, my site can show up as low as page 7. For normal keywords, I basically get no impressions and no traffic.

So now I’m wondering: what is the point of building a useful free website if nobody can find it?

I know SEO takes time, but this feels like I’m missing something fundamental. Is this normal for a new site? Is there something wrong with my indexing, technical SEO, backlink strategy, or content strategy?

What should I check first? And what would you do if you were in this situation?

Hello I have created a custom script in Termux, but it only throws this message.
The strange thing is that if i put every command on its own in the command line it works but in the script it only thorws this error.

Edit: I use the programm texlive

Can Someone please tell me what i did wrong?

Script:

cd $Directory 
/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/texlive/pdflatex $File 
sleep 5s 
termux-open $CompiledFile

Error:

This is pdfTeX Version 3. 141592653-2.6-1.40.29 (TeX Live 2026/Termux) (preloaded format=pdflatex) restricted Awrite18 enabled.
$84
kpathsea: Running mktexfmt pdflatex. fmt mktexfmt: No such file or directory can't find the format file pdflatex. fmt'!

Hi!

JabRef suggests "Firstname Lastname and Firstname Lastname and others" in the "author" field of my install.

If I fetch something via DOI, it usually ends up with a "lastname, firstname" style in the author field, which I then manually change to the suggested style with given name followed by family name, joined with an "and" if several authors.

This gives me a .bib file in which every entry looks somewhat like this:

\@article {Smith2026,
author = {John Smith and Bruce Wayne},
title = {What is it really like to be a bat?},
journaltitle = {My cool fake journal},
date = {2026},
}

I am not that adept with LaTeX (I know the basics), and I am usually provided with a template. Often it uses BibLaTeX and biber as backend, sometimes (still) natbib. I don't often have to manually adjust things, at times, the most "complicated" thing I have to do is declaring a name alias.

I have seen several bib files online or from other projects that had something like author = {lastname, firstname} - I know this works, too (and is the way the APIs usually import the works I want to cite).

What is the correct way of filling in the author field in my .bib file, so that everything gets compiled properly? Is there a reason JabRef suggests "firstname lastname and firstname lastname"?

Bibtex.eu mentions both styles (firstname lastname and the other way round), but I am still not sure about the...intricacies. Can the style change within my .bib file, or do I really have to manually adjust everything if I fetch citations and they all show up different in order to get uniform author fields?

The only thing I found in the BibTeX documentation says that author should be formatted as "described in the LaTeX book" (https://tug.org/texmf-docs/bibtex/btxdoc.pdf, p. 10).

Thanks!

Hey all, I have been using LaTeX for about 2 years now and love how it makes everything work and allows me to do what I need to for assignments and the like.

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in making a document/paper/book with all sorts of equations, footnotes, and figures simply because it looks cool. We could write about something fictional, a wacky conspiracy theory we think of, or maybe something extremely mundane like toast.

If this interests you, feel free to dm or comment!

https://preview.redd.it/ecf7acekjj1h1.png?width=1824&format=png&auto=webp&s=0d5e77f5102dbf8d97c2d3348269066e6f6d564d

I have finally decided to confront my fear of tikz and started drawing random lines as my practice mechanism.

I am guessing it will take a good minute to be comfortable in that front.

Ich würde gerne beim Schreiben von längeren Texten Vorschläge für meine Wörter erhalten. ZB ich tippe Verlän… und er schlägt Verlängerung vor, ähnlich wie es bei Word geht. Funktioniert das auch für Latex und mit welchem Package?

Hello everyone, I read an article with a really beautiful font. So I would like to know if anybody knows how to replicate it for my next work haha. It's not the standar and its not times new roman. Thx!

https://preview.redd.it/pq8cnks2db1h1.png?width=840&format=png&auto=webp&s=00cd82a4317ffc5b548490b2c4fcacf5ad5068e6

Hi everyone! I am in a bit of a pickle, I have a rather large latex project using a .csv file for data. I originally was working on overleaf with it, but had to move away due to compile times (I was also always going to do it due to workflow sorry trying to avoid tangents, as its irrelevant really). Main point is, I cleaned up all tje error messages back then, but since new ones have come up. I struggle to do proper troubleshooting in my current setup, and am wondering what is the best aproach?

I really liked how it is setup to find the errors in overleaf, and would prefer something similar. Is there any software like this? For what its worth I am using latexmk and compiling with pdflua.