

LaTeX Templates - VelNZ
http://www.LaTeXTemplates.com

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einhverfr
One of the occasional arguments we've had in the LedgerSMB community is
whether to ditch LaTeX. The arguments in favor have to do with UTF8 support
and internationalization, and the fact that 'everybody knows alternatives!'

In the end we've opted to keep it because LaTeX is so good at doing what it
does, and because our dependencies can be hacked to use XeTeX (for UTF-8
input) and so we are working to ensure that XeTeX support gets back upstream
instead. Additionally for documentation LaTeX source is quite easy to read
compared to the alternatives like DocBook, and LaTeX is also much more
expressive.

Sooner or later I expect we will factor out our invoice logic into document
classes and packages and try to get that on CTAN. Maybe then it will be worth
putting many of our templates on a site like this one (this site even)

~~~
fafner
pdflatex can handle UTF8 as well:

    
    
        \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
        \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

~~~
einhverfr
We haven't had a lot of luck using that for utf8. Also the character set is
relatively limited (can't do Korean characters for example that way).

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alexholehouse
I use LaTex for a lot of my note taking (for typesetting all equations
certainly). When I first started using it, I remember the absolute horror of
trying to get it to work with BibTex. The learning curve is relatively steep
for non-programmers (I learnt it basically in parallel with learning to code)
but it's certainly one of the most valuable tools I've learned and one I
continually come back to for a huge range of projects. Certainly in an
academic environment it continues to surprise me that everyone isn't taught
LaTex in their first year of a PhD.

~~~
ovis
I learned LaTeX the summer after my undergrad, and rely on it now.
Nevertheless, I'm not surprised that few others in my department, outside of
my group, use it. When work needs to be shared or collaborated on, the
simplest, lowest common denominator (Word or LO) wins out.

~~~
olliesaunders
What’s LO?

~~~
gjulianm
LibreOffice, I suppose.

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pessimism
Permit me to be coarse for the sake of simplicity and tell you that the only
LaTeX template you should spend your time and energy on is tufte-latex:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1572530>.

It even has a snazzy guide for setting it up on Stack Exchange:
[http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/setting-up-a-
lat...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/setting-up-a-latex-
document-using-the-uggedall-or-tufte-latex-templates).

It’s pretty much all you need, and configuring LaTeX can turn into a rabbit
hole you will never get out of. Try writing your project in tufte-latex, and I
am sure you’ll find that it fits the bill perfectly. I do recall something
about having to install an additional package to colour the hyperlinks or
something to that extent, though.

I have some old templates—even some boilerplate lying around—so you can drop
me a tweet or something, if it isn’t working for you, and I’ll throw something
up in a gist.

~~~
Semiapies
Your suggestion seems direct and opinionated, even blunt, but I wouldn't call
it "coarse". You're more polite and helpful here than a _lot_ of people are.

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e12e
Always interesting to see some templates for LaTeX -- but if the "selection"
made in the CV section is an indication of the overall thought that have gone
into the rest of the site, I don't really see that it offer much over
searching CTAN[1] and looking at the pdf-examples that are usually included
with the useful packages/templates available there ?

As I've recently been looking at writing up a CV with LaTeX, I've seen quite a
few rather awful templates -- and the site happens to list both examples of
the worst and best I found after a quick search on CTAN...

For others that are interested -- the best resource I've found so far is
actually a nice blog series on using the article-class for CV:

[http://www.texdev.net/2011/11/05/writing-a-curriculum-
vitae-...](http://www.texdev.net/2011/11/05/writing-a-curriculum-vitae-in-
latex-part-1/)

Also worth a read (but cover much of the same):

<http://texblog.org/2012/04/25/writing-a-cv-in-latex/>

[1] <http://www.ctan.org/>

edit: typo, minor clarification

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pseut
Just a nitpick: I had to look at the source for "professional table" and was
surprised to see the booktabs package used because, to quote their
documentation

> You will not go far wrong if you remember two simple guidelines at all
> times:

> 1\. Never, ever use vertical rules.

> 2\. Never use double rules.

Violating half the 'nevers'!! But, more seriously, the documentation for some
LaTeX packages is breathtakingly good (booktabs, amsmath, beamer, tikz, to
name a few off the top of my head) and it would be really helpful if the site
pointed newcomers to some of it. Especially in the case I mentioned, where the
template is _just_ a demonstration of one package.

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joshuagross
I found LaTeXTemplates just a little over a year ago when I was looking for
(shockingly) LaTeX templates, and it was /the only/ resource with decent
usable templates (in terms of source readability and having actually-pretty
templates). I'm the CTO of SpanDeX.io and we jumped on site integration
shortly after we launched, because LaTeXTemplates is badass. I see many of you
have hit our site after checking out LaTeXTemplates, so I'm glad some of you
find the gallery & the integrations useful! Cheers.

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rwhitman
Is LaTeX only for academic papers?

I have a client who needs to put a large volume of brochure-ready technical
specifications on both the web and rendered as attractive downloadable as
PDFs, in a hopefully machine-readable format. Really curious if LaTeX is ever
used as a solution in commercial applications where business users are most
familiar with word - or is that the wrong application?

~~~
ppereira
I once did this for a client that needed spec sheets with unit-specific test
data from a database. LaTeX is great because it is easy to generate
programmatically. Making nice PDFs is easy.

Exporting to HTML via htlatex is possible, but may require a lot of fine-
tuning. Depending on the content, it may be easier to generate the LaTeX/PDF
and HTML separately, or to generate only parts of the HTML using htlatex.

LaTeX special symbols are much easier to use than UTF8. It is easier to type
-- and be sure that you have properly entered -- en-dashes, non-breaking
spaces, fractions, degree symbols, directional quotation marks, and other non-
keyboard characters.

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rbkillea
I find writelatex.com to be immensely useful.

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Tyr42
I keep clicking the orange text below the share buttons, trying to get more
info. I think it should be a link, to the same place as the title of the
template links to.

I love it and I'm going to use the code template for my next assignment.

You have anything to draw DFAs?

~~~
emillon
tikz is awesome for this. I believe that DFAs are one of the examples
described in the manual.

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primitur
Wow, the Tufte template is an excellent resource .. I am going to print it and
put it right alongside the real Tufte's, its that good! :)

This collection is definitely going to make me use LaTeX one of these days. Of
course, I've been saying that for decades now.

~~~
swah
I wonder though, where was the "real Tufte" typeset?

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foobarram
For UK, I have used: <http://www.gaussnewton.com/convert-word-to-latex-tex>

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jlukecarlson
love the site and 'What is LaTeX' and 'Why' are really informative for a
beginner like myself

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daemon13
Is my understanding correct that LaTex can not handle UTF-8?

~~~
dfc
Use lualatex

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ninjin
Or XeTeX for that matter, even though I suspect LuaTeX may very well be the
future.

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hahainternet
If it was up an hour ago, it certainly isn't now.

~~~
VelNZ
Just increased the VPS RAM to 1.2Gb, up again now ;) Not used to this kind of
traffic...

~~~
hahainternet
Seems pretty interesting. Definitely a useful bookmark.

