Introducing “non-technical” people to LaTeX

Februar 16th, 2012 by Stefan Kottwitz

On TeX.SX, Primal Pappachan asked:

There are several answers, for helping learning LaTeX without being too complicated. Yiannis Lazarides gave some of the best suggestions:

Assist in the TeX installation and install a full distribution, to avoid frustration by installation difficulties later.
Provide a small template and a compilable document which roughly meets their requirements.
Assist with the first steps.
We are used to table of contents, lists and index - a new user though might be impressed how easy that is.
Explain the concepts of floats early - better show benefits than let a user run into unexpected problems with moving objects.

I would add:

Point the way to up-to-date LaTeX online resources.
Show how the mentioned Q&A site TeX.SX works, so he can ask for help or find existing solutions there.
Introduce him to a LaTeX discussion forum, such as LaTeX-Community.org. A web forum is easy to use and you can talk and discuss, in contrast to a Q&A site. Usenet might be a bit harder to introduce.
For best online support, explain the importance of code such as minimal working examples.

Visit the original question and answers on the site if you would like to read more.

This entry was posted on Donnerstag, Februar 16th, 2012 at 22:46 and is filed under TeX and LaTeX, TeX.SX, LaTeX General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Ernst Kloppenburg said:
März 9th, 2012 at 09:27
I think a very important point to add is to “lend them your favorite latex beginners book”, e.g. A Guide to LaTeX, by Helmut Kopka et al. Having a structured guide at hand helps to avoid the feeling of getting lost in complexity. Online resources are more difficult to use, they often require that you already have developed a clear picture of the structure of the system and that you know what you are looking for.

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