$\mathrm{L}\mathrm{A}\mathrm{T}\mathrm{E}\mathrm{X}$ course 2025

Course objective

This is a series of five lectures I will hold introducing the LaTeX document preparation system.

As a student or researcher in any of the natural sciences, really, you will probably sooner or later have to prepare a report, a thesis, a paper or even a book. LaTeX is very well suited for this task through its approach of structuring a document logically, making stylising very easy, through its programmability and portability and, last but not least, through its superb support for typography and mathematical typesetting. In the mathematical community at least, LaTeX is the de facto standard and even required by many publishing houses and journals.

The goal is to introduce LaTeX in a series of five talks that cover progressively more advanced topics, starting from the total beginner up to programming in LaTeX.

Organisational information

When? 17th – 21st March 2025

• Lecture: 11 a.m. s.t. – 1 p.m. (meaning 11 o'clock sharp for probably two hours).
• Tutorials: 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.

Where?

• Lecture: Alfred-Philippson lecture hall, Meckenheimer Allee 166. This is the main lecture hall of the Department of Geography.
• Tutorials: Mathematics Centre, Endenicher Allee 60, and annex. In particular: 0.006 (main), N0.003, N0.007, N0.008, PC-Pool (annex).

For whom? Anyone who is interested in learning LaTeX. Primarily intended for bachelor and master students of the Department of Mathematics and Department of Computer Science.

How? In English. Each day consists of two parts: the first part is a classical presentation with slides, followed by a 5min break. In the second part, we will see hands-on examples by TeX-ing simple documents in VS Code. Questions during the lectures are very welcome. In the afternoon, there are five tutors where exercise sheets are solved. Of course, you can also ask them for help. Ideally, solutions are discussed at the end.

What? An introduction to LaTeX, basically from zero to hero. Topics included:

• The rationale of LaTeX.
• Basic commands for typing a document.
• Extensive explanation on typing mathematics, including tikz-cd for commutative diagrams and diffcoef for derivatives.
• Basic usage of BibLaTeX for bibliographies, creating drawings and diagrams in TikZ.
• Writing pseudo code or programs in other languages.
• Hacking and programming LaTeX.
• Customising page layouts.
• Some typography here and there.

Who?

• Lecture: Tien Nguyen Thanh, B. Sc. Mathematics. I'm a LaTeX enthusiast and also did the LaTeX course last year.
• Tutorials:
  • August Gaugler, N0.003 (annex)
  • Jan Malmström, 0.006 (main)
  • Robin Meth, N0.007 (annex)
  • Ekaterini Tiriakidou, N0.008 (annex)
  • Hannes Heimberger, PC-Pool (annex)

Questions

I'm interested in the content of this course, but do I really need to physically come to the lectures?

I think you should. Note that there will be no live stream of the lectures (I don't get paid enough for this).

Compared to last year, the slides are kept fairly short for reference purposes. Moreover, I will try to do valuable hands-on examples during lecture. Both slides and examples will be uploaded here.

I only want to learn the bare minimum on LaTeX to survive/I'm only interested in the more advanced stuff. Do I really need to attend all talks?

Of course not, come and go to whichever lectures you find interesting. The plan for each day is roughly the following:

1. Introduction and typing text.
2. Typing mathematics.
3. Creating bibliographies, drawing diagrams.
4. Writing (pseudo-)code, customising layout.
5. Writing packages, programming in LaTeX.

I strongly recommend for any beginner to attend lectures 1 and 2. As for lecture 3, it might be helpful (you never know), especially if you want to write a thesis.

Do I need to bring my device/laptop/tablet?

This is suggested, as there will be live examples during lectures which you can type with me (like taking notes during class). This also allows you to experiment on your own and to gain immediate experience with error messages XD. Regarding the tutorials, the PC-Pool has computers provided by university.

Thank you for this course! I still have some questions/I need some tech (TeX) support. Can I contact you somehow and ask you for help?

Of course, I'm happy to help. You can write me an email at tien.nguyen@uni-bonn.de, write me a message (with code!) via Signal or sometimes find me in the 'Aufenthaltsraum' (student lounge) in the annex of the Mathematics Centre. Note however that I have most experience with the ecosystems that I personally use (mostly pdfLaTeX, Windows, Arch/Manjaro, Neovim and VimTeX). Anything else is beyond my expertise.

Licensing

The parts of this project are licensed differently:

• the source code of the presentation (latex_presentation.tex and sections/), the source code of the exercises (exercises/), and the physical PDFs are licensed under the Apache License 2.0 (among others, this says that private usage is allowed),
• the content of the PDF presentation slides is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (in particular, you should give credit to me),
• all code examples in the PDF presentation slides, the exercises in the PDFs itself, and the example code (examples/) are licensed under the CC0 1.0 (i.e. do whatever the hell you want with them).

Regarding the images (.png files), all of them are my own work, and hence are licensed under the Apache License 2.0 as well.