A COMPLETE STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO LEARN LATEX

Getting Started with LaTeX

Learn LaTeX from basic to advance level

Muhammad Yahya

Published in

Level Up Coding

9 min readMay 28, 2020

Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX

LaTeX is a high-quality document preparation system that is used to produce professional-looking technical and scientific documents. To prepare a document in LaTeX, we need a LaTeX source file that contains LaTex code and actual contents of the document. This file ends with an extension .tex. The other thing we need is a text editor to edit the source file. Running the LaTeX compiler will compile the source file into a document interchange format such as pdf that can be then previewed in any pdf viewer.

This article series is aimed to help you get started with the LaTex from a very beginner's level to advanced level. In the first part, we will learn about basic software installation and compose a simple document with a title page in LaTex.

Installation

In order to start composing a document in LaTeX, you need to install two things:

A LaTeX distribution
2. A text editor

There are several LaTeX distributions and editors available but for this tutorial, we will use MikTex and Texmaker as a distribution and editor respectively.

Download and Install MiKTeX

Download MiKTeX distribution from this link.

After downloading, run the downloaded file and proceed with the default instructions. You can see pictures of the installation process here.

Download and Install Texmaker

Download the Texmaker editor from this link.

After downloading, run the downloaded file and proceed with the default instructions.

Composing First Document

Download the example project files from this Github repo.
Open main.tex file in Texmaker and click on the Run button and voila 🎉.
Note: You may need to click on the Run button twice to generate a table of contents. Also, install the package if a message window pops up.

This part will explain the LaTeX document structure and how to create a title page

The Layout of a LaTeX File

To create a document in LaTeX, we need a plain text file that ends with the extension ‘.tex’. This file contains the LaTeX code (the LaTeX commands) and the actual contents of the document. The LaTeX commands are used to define how the document should be formatted and every command starts with the backslash. The typical structure of the LaTeX command is \commandname{options}.

The LaTeX compiler takes .tex as input and compiles it into .pdf file.

The .tex file can be divided into two main parts:

The preamble of a Document
The Document

Let’s take a look at the contents of a very simple .tex file:

\documentclass[12pt, letter]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}\begin{document}
  Hello World!
\end{document}

The Preamble

The part of the .tex file before the \begin{document} is called the preamble. The preamble part of the .tex file contains commands, load extra packages, and set different parameters. In the above block of code, we define the document class as an article. Other options for the document class are:

report
letter
book
beamer

The additional parameters can be defined inside the brackets in a comma-separated fashion. For example in the command \documentclass[12pt, letter]{article}, the font and paper size are defined.

The Document

The actual text of the document, including paragraphs, tables, and images, etc., goes between the \begin{document} and \end{document}.

Update the above block of code as follows:

\documentclass[12pt, letter]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}\begin{document}
  \section{This is First Level Heading}
  This is the first level heading.  \subsection{This is Second Level Heading}
  This is the second-level heading.  \subsubsection{This is Third Level Heading}
  This is the third level heading.
\end{document}

Compile the document in the editor and have a look at the pdf document.

The Title Page

The contents of the title page should be placed in the preamble. Let’s define some contents for the title page:

\title{This is Title of the Document}
\author{Author's Name}
\date{25 May 2020}

Now we need to use \maketitle after the \begin{document} to display the title page. However, this will start writing the document from the title page, just after finishing the title page contents.

If you want to start writing the document on the next page, use titlepage environment. Place the following block of code just after the \begin{document}

\begin{titlepage}
\maketitle
\end{titlepage}

By default, the article class starts page numbering from the title page. However, you can remove the page number from the title page using the command \thispagestyle{empty} after the \maketitle command:

\begin{titlepage}
\maketitle
\thispagestyle{empty}
\end{titlepage}

In the date command (\date{25 May 2020}), you can use the current date instead of the manual one by using the \date{\today} command.

Download the example project files from this Github repo, open main.tex file in Texmaker, and click on the Run button and voila 🎉.

Adding Images

In LaTeX, images are automatically indexed and tagged with successive numbers when we use the figure environment in combination with graphicx package. To use images in the LaTeX document, we need to use a package called graphicx. To use the graphicx package, add the following command in the preamble of the .tex file:

\usepackage{graphicx}

Before adding images to the document, let’s create an images directory that will keep all the images to be included in the document and add some images to it. We can define the path of the newly created images directory by adding the following command in the preamble:

\usepackage{graphicx}
\graphicspath{ {./images/} }

The command takes one mandatory parameter, the image path in the curly braces, and an optional image width parameter in square brackets. By using the above command, we specify that images is the folder in the current working directory that contains images to include, and thus the compiler will look for this folder to add images. Let's say there is an image named latex-logo inside the images directory, use the following command to add this image to the document:

\includegraphics{latex-logo}

It is important that there must be no space within the image name. We can also specify the image file extension, for example, latex-logo.png, but omitting the extension will allow LaTeX to search for compatible formats in the images folder.

Advanced Image setup

LaTeX offers multiple options to configure the images to make them presentable in a way you want. In the next section, we will take a look at some more commonly used image configurations.

Scaling Image Width and Height

We can adjust the width and height of the image in the following ways:

Set the image size with respect to its original size: use the option scale to adjust the size of the image with respect to its original size.

\includegraphics[scale=2]{latex-logo}

Use the measurement units: We can use the measurement units to specify the height and width of the image.

\includegraphics[width=5cm, height=4cm]{latex-logo}

It is important to note that if we only specify one parameter, for example the width only, the height will be adjusted accordingly to keep the aspect ratio intact.

\includegraphics[width=5cm]{latex-logo}

Set the size with respect to a document element: We can set the width and height parameters with respect to some other elements of the document. For example, the following command will set the width of the image to the width of the text in the document.

\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{latex-logo}

Another option that we can use is \linewidth which will scale the image to fit the size of the document.

Using the Figure Environment

We will make use of the figure environment to enable some additional features such as image positioning, image labels, captions, and references, etc. This environment displays the images as floating elements within the document and automatically adjust their placement according to the flow of the document. Also, the figure environment automatically numbered the images within the document.

The figure environment starts with \begin{figure} and ends with \end{figure} command.

Positioning the Images: The following command will make use of the figure environment to place the figure as floating-point. Additionally, we can use the \centering command to align the image in the center of the document (default is left align).

\begin{figure}[h]
	\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{latex-logo}
	\centering
\end{figure}

In the above block of code, we are placing the image at approximately the same point it occurs in the text by using float value in the form of an additional parameter [h]. The other float values that can be used to position the image are explained in the table below:

The combination of override ! with other float values will forcefully apply the specified float value. For example, [h!] will forcefully place the image at the position of the image command in the .tex file.

Adding Captions: Captions can be added to briefly describe the images using the \caption command. The position of the caption, below or above the image, is determined by the placement of \caption command. If the \caption command is placed before the \\includegraphics command, the caption will appear above the image and vice versa.

\begin{figure}[h]
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{latex-logo}
	\caption{This is LaTeX project logo}
\end{figure}

Adding Labels: Labels are useful for cross-referencing the images in the document. A label can be added to the image by using the \label command and then use that label to refer the image in the document.

\begin{figure}[h]
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{latex-logo}
	\caption{This is \LaTeX\ project logo}
	\label{logo}
\end{figure}
 
The figure \ref{logo} show the \LaTeX\ project logo on page \pageref{logo}.

\ref command refers to the image and \pageref command prints the page number where the referred image is placed.

Note: you may need to click the run button twice to print the page numbers in the document.

List of Figures: Finally, we can generate a list of figures by using the \listoffigures commands after the \begindocument.

Adding Multiple Images

We can add multiple images to the adding by using a combination of subcaption package and subfigure environment.

Let’s add subcaption package in the preamble of the .tex file and define subfigure environment within the figure environment.

\begin{document}\begin{figure}[h!]
	\centering
	\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.4\linewidth}
		\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{latex-logo}
		\caption{\LaTeX\ logo}
		\label{logo1}
	\end{subfigure}
	\hfill
	\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.4\linewidth}
		\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{latex-logo}
		\caption{Same \LaTeX\ logo}
		\label{logo2}
	\end{subfigure}
	\caption{\LaTeX\ logo}
	\label{logo3}
\end{figure}We have added figures \ref{logo1} and \ref{logo2} in the figure \ref{logo3} on page \pageref{logo3}.\end{document}

In the above block of code:

We first defined the figure environment and then subfigure environment inside it
For the subfigure environment, [b] is placement specifier and {0.4\linewidth} is the width of the image box (not the width of the image itself). The Sum of widths for all image boxes must be less than the linewidth if we want to have all images in one line. For example, if we want to put three images in one line, we can set the image box width as 0.3\linewidth.
In \includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{latex-logo}, we specify image width and path. Here the linewidth is the width we have specified in the \begin{subfigure}[b]{0.4\linewidth}. In other words, if we use width=\linewidth in \includegraphics command, it will use all the width specified in the subfigure command.
We can add some space between the images using horizontal fill \hfill command.
Additionally, we can assign caption and label to each image using \caption and \label commands respectively for cross-referencing.

Wrapping Text around the Image

We can wrap text around the images especially in the case when there are multiple small images in the document. To achieve this, we will make use of another environment called wrapfigure. Let's have a look at the following block of code to wrap the text around the images.

\begin{wrapfigure}{r}{0.48\textwidth}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{latex-logo}
	\caption{\LaTeX\ logo}
	\label{logo4}
\end{wrapfigure}We can wrap text around the images especially in the case when there are multiple small images in the document. To achieve this, we will make use of another environment called 'wrapfigure'. Let's have a look at the following block of code to wrap the text around the images.\begin{wrapfigure}{l}{0.48\textwidth}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{latex-logo}
	\caption{\LaTeX\ logo}
	\label{logo5}
\end{wrapfigure}Other placement specifiers that can be used are 'l', 'i', and 'o' which will place the images left to the text, inside the edge, and outside the edge respectively.