Source code for "LaTeX: More than just academic papers & theses"

I’ve posted the source code for my presentation LaTeX: More Than Just Academic Papers and Theses as an example on Overleaf.

Enjoy!

A New LaTeX User’s Testimonial

Last week I received an e-mail from Bahareh Pahlevanzadeh, a graduate student at Universiti Sains Malaysia, describing her happiness at discovering L^aT_eX and my usmthesis class/template for writing her thesis.

Your mileage may vary, but I was a bit surprised when she expressed her opinion that

When it comes to getting my writing organised, I found L^aT_eX, especially with the USMthesis class template, to be actually very user-friendly.

Well I don’t know about you, but I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard/read in person the words “very user-friendly” being used to describe L^aT_eX!

You can read more about Bahareh’s experience here.

LaTeX Training & Consultancy

I’ve recently started offering L^aT_eX training and consultancy services as a freelancer (between writing up my thesis and parenting). So if you happen to be sourcing for a trainer, or need a consultant for L^aT_eX-related typesetting or design, feel free to have a look at my webpage and contact me.

Thanks to the other blog authors for letting me post this here. I’m doing this T&C as a personal attempt, so please address your gripes just to me (Lian Tze) if you have any issues with my services, and not to the other authors here.

Use of LaTeX in Industry

A question on TeX.SX about “How is L^aT_eX used in industry and what are some examples?” has garnered over 6k views since posted yesterday. I had mentioned during my MOSC talk that L^aT_eX would be very useful in scenarios where some printable content has to be batch-generated or on-the-fly, and now some actual real life examples are given in the answers.

For example, this website allows users to query transportation timetables and returns the results as a pdfTeX-generated PDF:

And here’s another schedule generated by another German transportation website (PDF):

If you read the other answers, you’ll see what and how L^aT_eX is used in other companies (besides academic publishers). For example, this answer by Peter Flynn:

As a LaTeX consultancy, we have produced classes and styles for many organisations, including companies, government departments, and non-profits. A London auction house uses LaTeX to generate invoices; an electronic systems training company uses LyX and LaTeX to create their course workbooks and white papers; a Dublin printer uses LaTeX for pharmaceutical labelling; a local government organisation uses TeX to generate the Register of Voters; a professional scientific association uses LaTeX for its regular series of technical reports; and of course we use it internally for client reports, newsletters, and invoicing.

English Translation of ChinaTeX’s Interview

I’ve finally gotten round to translating ChinaTeX’s interview with me (originally in Chinese) into English. It’s not a word-for-word translation, but I made sure the main points are preserved.

ChinaTeX Interview

As you may guess from the name, ChinaTeX is a T_eX resources website from China. They’ve done a good job rounding up T_eX resources from around the Web, and translating them to Chinese for the benefit of Chinese users. Their latest endeavors over the weekend was to provide video tutorials.

Recently ChinaTeX approached me for an e-mail interview. We talked mainly about how I came to know, love and use L^aT_eX in book design and typesetting. Thanks for the interview, guys! 有空再来坐坐、交流，谢谢！

LaTeX: More Than Just Academic Papers and Theses

Update 2 July 2011: OK source code uploaded per request, see link below.

So my slides for the talk on L^aT_eX during MOSC2011 are done and available for download. (This version without animations etc. to minimise the file size. Updated and corrected 30 June 2011; Thanks to Stefan Kottwitz, Felipe and Per for pointing out some mistakes.)

LaTeX: More Than Just Academic Papers and Theses

PDF and source code download

As mentioned before, it won’t be a tutorial, rather I plan to give teasers of what L^aT_eX is capable of beyond the usual journal or conference articles. I have undoubtedly left out many interesting use cases, so please don’t flog me if I haven’t included your favorite package or class! ;-) But do drop me a line and we’ll do a future post on it.

(Update: See this post about the Beamer theme used for the slides.)

Talk at MOSC2011

My proposed talk on L^aT_eX has just been accepted by the organisers of MOSC2011.

Now I need to actually write the slides!

Anyway, I plan to speak on “L^aT_eX: More Than Just Academic Papers and Theses”. It won’t be a tutorial, rather I plan to give teasers of what L^aT_eX is capable of beyond the usual journal or conference articles.

This will also be my first time attending an OSS conference. I do rather feel queasy at the thought of being intimidated by crusty h4x0rs. :-)

UPDATE: The organisers have posted my speaker’s profile.