Preamble

Preamble is where you put all your defining and including stuff there. It’s a bit like

#include 
#define BLAH blahblah

in C.

In , we need to start with a

\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}

to start an article. Usually when I write an assignment or Lab report, I use article rather than report.

Packages

Then it’s the packages. is so versatile because so many clever people put their effort in improving it. The usual ones that I use are:

\usepackage[margin=1cm]{geometry} % For paper margin
\usepackage{amsmath, amssymb, color, colortbl, graphicx, tikz, setspace, multirow}
\usepackage[pdfstartview=FitH]{hyperref}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
% amsmath is used for generating math expressions;
% amssymb is used for getting prettier math symbols;
% color is color :) and colortbl can be used to highlight cells in tabular (table);
% graphicx is used for importing graphics to the document;
% tikz is a strong and powerful graphics drawer, very versatile and difficult to learn them all.
% setspace is used for setting space size between lines. 
% multirow is an extra tool used for mainly creating tables.
% hyperref is used to changing default zoom options.
% inputenc set the default encoding to utf8 or else.

The percentage sign % is comment sign! When you need the percentage sign, you need to type \% like in regex.
When it comes to you that you’ll use some of the packages, then include the necessary ones into your \usepackage.

Resources

amssymb list: http://www.math.niu.edu/help/tex/amssymbols.pdf
tikz examples: http://www.texample.net/tikz/
tikz docu: http://www.texample.net/media/pgf/builds/pgfmanualCVS2012-11-04.pdf
Importing graphics: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Importing_Graphics
setspace: http://mirror.its.dal.ca/ctan/macros/latex/contrib/setspace/setspace.sty
multirow: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Tables#Columns_spanning_multiple_rows
hyperref:http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/tex/macros/latex/contrib/hyperref/doc/manual.html
Always, Google is our best friend.

End of Preamble

For more detailed Document Structure, please visit WikiBooks

Document

After finishing the preamble content, let’s start to write our content!
Usually we need to add title, author and date on our first page for lab report or assignments.

\begin{document}
\title{Some Lab Report \\ % \\ is nextline
     Circuit Lab \\
     Section 1 \\
     Composed by: }
\author{ Luxing Huang \and Some Guy \and Another Guy }
\date{\today}
\maketitle

You can extend your spacing between lines using \vspace{2cm} inside your title or author section.
I think the indentation is messed up by default, so I always add

\setlength{\parindent}{0cm}

under \maketitle.

Then time for your \section{name}’s. And \subsections.

Math

The math module is very fun. You need to write your math expressions inside two dollar signs “$”.

$\sum m{(0, 1, 3, 6)}$

looks like: , fraction function is

\frac{numeritor}{denominator}

Some Math resources: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Mathematics http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Advanced_Mathematics

Table

Table is even more fun. Here is a snippet of my for the lab work:

\begin{center}
    \begin{tabular}{l l l l l l} 
        A & B & C & D & f & Simu \\ \hline
        0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 & 1 \\ \hline
        0 & 0 & 0 & 1 & 1 & 1 \\ \hline
        0 & 0 & 1 & 0 & 1 & 1 \\ \hline
        0 & 0 & 1 & 1 & 0 & 0 \\ \hline
        0 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 1 & 1 \\ \hline
        0 & 1 & 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 \\ \hline
        0 & 1 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ \hline
        0 & 1 & 1 & 1 & 1 & 1 \\ \hline
        1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ \hline
        1 & 0 & 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 \\ \hline
        1 & 0 & 1 & 0 & 1 & 1 \\ \hline
        1 & 0 & 1 & 1 & 1 & 1 \\ \hline
        1 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ \hline
        1 & 1 & 0 & 1 & 1 & 1 \\ \hline
        1 & 1 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ \hline
        1 & 1 & 1 & 1 & 0 & 0 \\ 
    \end{tabular} 
\end{center}

You define whether you’ll need a column line in \begin{tabular}{l l l l l l}, where the second set of braces located. So l l l l l means 5 left alignment’s, if I write |c|c|c|c|c| then I’ll get colomn lines (\cline) and text centered. \hline is obviously a horizontal line.
More on tables: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Tables.

Tikz

Tikz is always a headache for me. I do not have enough time to dig through it but I know it’s extreamly powerful.
Here is some code I wrote for probability tree:

\tikzstyle{level 1}=[level distance=3cm, sibling distance=7cm]
\tikzstyle{level 2}=[level distance=1.5cm, sibling distance=3.5cm]
\tikzstyle{level 3}=[level distance=2.5cm, sibling distance=2cm]

\tikzstyle{fly}=[text width=2em, text centered]
\tikzstyle{end}=[circle, minimum width=1pt, fill, inner sep=0pt]

\begin{tikzpicture}[grow=right, sloped]
\node[fly] {}
child
{
    node[fly] {B}
    child
    {
        node[fly]{B}
        child
        {
            node [end, label=right:B BBB 0.027] {}
            edge from parent
            node[above] {0.3}
        }   
        child
        {   
            node[end, label=right:G BBG 0.063] {}
            edge from parent
            node[above] {0.7}
        }   
    }       
    child   
    {   
        node[fly]{G}
        child
        {
            node[end, label=right:B BGB 0.063] {}
            edge from parent
            node[above] {0.3}
        }   
        child
        {   
            node[end, label=right:G BGG 0.147] {}
            edge from parent
            node[above] {0.7}
        }   
    }       
}
child   
{   
    node[fly] {G}
    child
    {
        node[fly]{B}
        child
        {
            node[end, label=right:B GBB 0.063] {}
            edge from parent
            node[above] {0.3}
        }
        child
        {
            node[end, label=right:G GBG 0.147] {}
            edge from parent
            node[above] {0.7}
        }
    }
    child
    {
        node[fly]{G}
        child
        {
            node[end, label=right:B GGB 0.147] {}
            edge from parent
            node[above] {0.3}
        }
        child
        {
            node[end, label=right:G GGG 0.343] {}
            edge from parent
            node[above] {0.7}
        }
    }
};
\end{tikzpicture}

You’ll see what it looks like when you compile it to PDF.

Bullet Points and Indentation

There are 3 types of bullet points listing, itemize(points or dashes), enumerate(using numbers and abc’s) and description, can be nested. No external package required. Code is like this:

\begin{itemize}
    \item Be Professional

        \begin{itemize}
            \item Formal

            \item Subject Line - State the Purpose

            \item Hello, Good Morning, Good Afternoon ...

            \item Clear, concise, get to the point

            \item Proofread everything
        \end{itemize}

    \item Don't be Emotional

        \begin{itemize}
            \item Angry, Sad, Frustrated.

            \item Never assume the receiver will take your message the way you expect.

            \item Limit the exchanges

            \item Limit the "reply all" Button

            \item Acronyms

                \begin{description}
                    \item[yes]: TQM(Total Quality Management)/CEO/ROI

                    \item[no]: LOL/TTYL/CUL8R
                \end{description}
        \end{itemize}
\end{itemize}

Compilation

is so great when it work with Makefile. I didn’t write much for my Makefile, here is the general template:

LC = pdflatex  # LC stands for Latex Compiler
SOURCE = assign5.tex
OUTPUT = assign5.pdf

make: all

all: $(SOURCE)
    $(CC) $(SOURCE) $(OUTPUT)
    okular $(OUTPUT) #okular is my pdf viewer.

When you see an error or warning while compiling PDF from .tex files, read where the problem is, and type X then enter to quit compilation. Otherwise sometimes pdflatex will drain your CPU resource.
When you finish your document, put \end{document} at the very bottom.

texlive

This is the package you need to install under your system. For Linux users, package manage systems should already include most of the latex packages.
For RHEL and Fedora users, type

sudo yum install texlive*

should do the intallation job.
I will add more notes when it comes to me.