$\mathrm{L}\mathrm{A}\mathrm{T}\mathrm{E}\mathrm{X}$ course 2026

Course objective

This is a series of four talks 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 four talks that cover progressively more advanced topics, starting from the total beginner up to programming in LaTeX.

Evaluation

It appears to me that the talks are not well-suited for the majority of the audience. The goal was always to be very comprehensive, so that

1. to give a thorough introduction for beginners during the first two to three days on the one hand, and
2. to show interested people, who are well acquainted with the basics of LaTeX, more advanced topics on the other hand.

The majority, however, is clearly on the beginner side, either wanting to strengthen their rudiments or even learning LaTeX solely out of necessity. The lecture format doesn't serve this purpose at all: it is way too fast and monotone, not really practical.

Inspired by a stream of a programmer who was learning a new programming language by themselves, me giving talks on a programming language is surely one of the most unpedagogical approaches possible: even people who do programming for a job don't do this. That's why in 2025, I started to show live demonstrations with working examples after the talks as well as exercises to try everything in action. After all, LaTeX is a skill, not just pure knowledge which can be memorised.

Going forward, I propose a different approach to teaching. The exercises are arguably the most important for many since they can learn by doing, and the slides serve as a well-structured reference. In more of like a lab setting, everyone can go through the slides by themselves and solve the exercise at their own speed. A number of tutors can help them, giving advice and best practices where necessary. The lab could continue 4–6 hours each day. If the goal is to write a thesis, then the provided lesson plan should take five days; otherwise, extra lessons are available for the avid learners. But in the end, the emphasis is on beginners. Of course, this can only work if the number of students is not too big, but this is the case in my experience (2025/2026, there were at most 30 people on any given day).

Organisational information

When? 7th – 10th April 2026

• Lecture: 10:15 a.m. – 12:15 a.m.
• Tutorials: 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Where?

• Lecture: Alfred-Philippson lecture hall, Meckenheimer Allee 166. This is the main lecture hall of the Department of Geography.
• Tutorials: PC-Pool, annex of the Mathematics Centre, Endenicher Allee 60. If the PC-Pool and neighbouring rooms in the annex don't suffice, we'll partly fall back to the Alfred-Philippson lecture hall.

For whom? Anyone who is interested in learning LaTeX. Primarily intended for bachelor and master students of the Department of Mathematics, but other majors are most welcome.

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 talks are very welcome.

In the afternoon, there are two 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.
• Customising page layouts.
• Easy definitions of commands, writing custom preambles/packages.
• Some typography here and there.

Who?

• Lecture: Tien Nguyen Thanh. I'm a LaTeX enthusiast and also did the LaTeX course the last two years.
• Tutorials:
  • Tien Nguyen Thanh (annex, Alfred-Philippson lecture hall if necessary)
  • Jan Malmström (PC-Pool)

Questions

Will the slides be uploaded?

Yes, the slides and live examples are both provided here.

What's the plan for each day?

The talks are thematic and quite modular, so visit the ones you're interested in. 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, writing packages.

I strongly recommend for any beginner to attend talk 1 and 2. Talk 3 can be helpful, especially if you want to write a thesis.

Do I need to bring my laptop?

Since there will be live examples for you to type along, this could be a good idea. You can also experiment with stuff on your own during the talks (handling error messages is an important skill). Regarding the tutorials, the PC-Pool has computers provided by the university, but you can bring your own device, of course.

How can I contact you?

Reach out to me via email (tien.nguyen@uni-bonn.de) or Signal/WhatsApp, or ask me in-person. You can also message me outside of this is course if you need help with your LaTeX document.

Other tools

For your information, here the list of tools I used for preparing the talks.

References

• TeX Stackexchange
• Mittelbach, Fischer: The LaTeX Companion, Parts I & II, 3rd Ed. (2023).
• For inspiration: Oetiker: *The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX.
• A bunch of package documentation.

Programming environment

• Neovim
• zathura, a PDF viewer
• vimtex plugin for LaTeX support
• luasnip plugin for snippets

Presentation tools

• Visual Studio Code with the LaTeX Workshop extension
• pdfpc for presenting
• Show Me The Key for displaying keystrokes
• wl-mirror to duplicate my screen because of Wayland

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 (in this directory!) are my own work, and hence are licensed under the Apache License 2.0 as well. However, ../2024/kirby.png of the Kirby franchise is a trade mark under Nintendo Co., Ltd.