www.grundlos.org

Zunächst einmal sollte man die neueste Version von MacTeX installieren. Der Download dauert eine Weile, zwischenzeitlich kann man einen Blick auf diesen Artikel werfen The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2ε. Hier erhält man einen sehr guten Einblick was LaTeX ausmacht und wie es funktioniert. Nebenbei kann man auch schon mal die professionellen Ergebnisse mit LaTeX bewundern: Das Dokument wurde natürlich komplett mit diesem Programm erstellt.

Außerdem sollte man sich einen ordentlichen Texteditor besorgen. Theoretisch kann man auch TextEdit benutzen, aber mit einem vernünftigem Werkzeug wie TextWrangler wird man mehr Freude haben.

Wenn MacTeX heruntergeladen und installiert ist, kann man als erstes TeXShop starten (zu finden in “Programme/TeX/” auf der Festplatte).

Wir geben folgenden Code in das offene Fenster ein:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Small is beautiful.
\end{document}


Um zu sehen wie das Ergebnis gesetzt aussieht, muss man den “Setzen”-Knopf oben links im Fenster drücken. Das erstellte .pdf wird automatisch angezeigt.

Zum Glück muss man nicht alles selbst erstellen. Die Humboldt-Universität hat in ihrem edoc-Programm bereits eine exzellente und regelmäßig aktualisierte Vorlage für Dissertationen in LaTeX. Hier muss man lediglich die Hauptdatei “mustermann.tex” mit seinem eigenen Nachnamen benennen und in der Datei die notwendigen Metadaten zu Person, Titel der Arbeit und so weiter eintragen. Dann kann man im Prinzip schon loslegen die einzelnen Kapitel zu bearbeiten, die der Übersichtlichkeit halber in einzelnen Dateien gespeichert sind (“chapter01.tex”).

TextWrangler bietet hier praktischerweise die Möglichkeit eine Vielzahl von Dateien gleichzeitig übersichtlich zu öffnen. So wird die Bearbeitung der Dissertation ein Kinderspiel.

Um richtig loslegen zu können, reicht es zunächst einmal folgende LaTeX-Befehle zu kennen:

• chapter{Kapitelname} Weist ein neues Kapitel aus, mit diesem Befehl sollte jede “chapter.tex”-Datei beginnen.
• section{Überschrift} Weist die Überschriften innerhalb eines Kapitels aus. Untergeordnete Überschriften werden logisch mit
• subsection{Unterüberschrift} beziehungsweise
• subsubsection{Unterunterüberschrift} gekennzeichnet.

Ein neuer Absatz wird durch eine Leerzeile angezeigt.

In den nächsten Teilen werde ich noch auf das Einfügen von Bildern und Tabellen eingehen.

So you need to write a doctoral thesis, diploma, homework, whatsoever scientific text? Before you start, think on what you will need to write it. You need not just any software, but a solution that will really help you through the process without causing tears and pain. I came up with 6 requirements that seem to me the most important ones:

1. Stability – every crash might destroy hard work.
2. Automatic indexing – a table of contents that updates automatically and kind of looks good
3. Reference manager – I’ve got 73 References in my thesis. Usually you will have read a lot more articles and need to be able to insert them easily in your work. The Software should handle the numbering and sorting of your bibliography, because manually updating every reference is a hassle we don’t even want to think about.
4. Pagenumbering – Roman, arabic, whatsoever: it should work without thinking to much about it.
5. Formatting – 12 point text, 1.5 line spacing, this image belongs to this section. That’s about how much I would like to tell the program, the rest it should work out on its own.
6. Justification – Type setting should be justified. Hyphenation should work automatically.

You were thinking of using Word (or any other standard word processor) because you already have it installed on your computer? Now let’s see how well it does with the requirements listed above:

1. Stability – not so much. Or did your Word never crash? Now think a really long document. With pictures. Equations. References. Crash. Crash. Crash. If you thought you could just write away… no way. You need to split your document in pieces and try to put it together again before the end.
2. Automatic indexing – Works kind of, but only works if you correctly used “Styles” to mark up different sections. Think a moment about having split the document and try to come up with a simple solution to create a table of contents for all of them with correct page numbering…
3. Reference manager – try and get “Endnote” (299$ Price Tag) or “Reference Manager” (250$ Price Tag). Even if you have that much money you will find, that with more than 20 References in your document the editing process won’t run as smooth as you would like. Try to get a continuous count through all of your split documents…
4. Pagenumbering – Roman? Arabic? Works but try to get it straight through your split documents…
5. Formatting – Word is stupid. You will have to tell it how to do everything. What letter size would be good for my title? How should a subheading be sized? What would be a nice size for my page numbers? My headers should be different for pages where new chapters start…
6. Justification – I never found out how to do hyphenation automatically in Word. Well anyway: justified text is full of nasty white holes with Word.

All in all it’s safe to say: use Word for your thesis and you will be sorry. Don’t say you have not been warned.

Next, let’s see how LaTeX does:

1. Stability – Writing with LaTeX will be as stable as your favorite text editor. Because that is what you will use. For Macs I recommend Textwrangler. Edit your thesis as a single file or with multiple files whatever you want is possible without hassle. Crashes while editing my thesis: 0.
2. Automatic indexing – Right where you want it, beautifully formatted without even so much as spending a thought on it. Updates automatically.
3. Reference Manager – Get BibDesk for free and have more than Endnote can ever dream of having.
4. Pagenumbering – across multiple files? No problem. Start roman. From here arabic. Done.
5. Formatting – 12 pt, two-sided document with adapted page margins. Done. Never worry what letter size anything should have. LaTeX has sophisticated algorithms to take care of that.
6. Justification – Talk about justificated typesetting… it just works. Never think about it. LaTeX will produce beautifully typeset text, perfectly justified. No nasty white spaces, just smooth text. Hyphenation? Already done.

Pretty obvious why everybody wanting to write something longer than a page should use LaTeX, is it not? The downside is, LaTeX is not a WYSIWYG-texteditor and when first trying to understand how everything works it might be a little confusing (to say the least). But it’s so worth the effort! Look for the next post to see how to get started!

I’m just testing the WordPress app to see how well it works. Seems like a great way to update the blog while on the go. A little buggy though. Crashes like 5 times during this post. The screenshot is especially tricky. Crashed the app after the upload. Then its posted like three times and way to big. Editing the post now on my MacBook to get it right. Conclusion: Nice idea, but not working yet.

A colleague recently pointed me to a new kind of presentation software called “Prezi”. I gave it a look and the results are really worth seeing. The idea behind the software is presenting information the way our brain works. It gives you the possibility to literally present the grand picture of an idea and then start zooming in on all the details. Incredibly intuitive and very easy to follow. Not to mention visually extraordinarily appealing. It’s also a great help to structure your ideas: just make important things big, and less essential information small. Start grouping together things that have something in common, put them in a common frame… it’s pretty easy to get creative this way.
The little downside is the marketing concept of the software: It’s published as software-as-service. A basic version is free, but if you want to remove the prezi-watermark or make your presentation private, you’ll have to pay a monthly fee. Unless you happen to be a student or a teacher, these groups get the “enjoy”-Version for free. Presentations can be downloaded once completed and run as standalone package without web connection or browser or flash-plugin. Well anyway, I’ll be sure to do my next presentation with this one — check out this great presentation on how to teach math… (watch it on full screen!)

THE HUNT FOR GOLLUM – FULL Trailer 1 from Chris Bouchard on Vimeo.

This is the trailer to a fan film project based on Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”. It’s inspired by the appendices of the book and tells the story of Aragorns hunt for Gollum. Holy Moly! This looks freakin’ good! I can’t wait to see it!

Update: The official site recently announced the release date to be May 3rd, 2009. Looking forward to it

D.O.N.E. well at least with my exam I’ve passed and seems like I’m going to get a 2 (“good”) overall. Mood: pleased
Next up is my doctoral thesis… and finding a decent job

Anybody out there who’s got the feeling for a taste of good old Star Wars like it was back in the times of Episode IV? I just ran across a fan-made Star Wars movie and I think it rocks! Consider what you get with no budget at all just pure idealism… check it out! It’s been made in 2005 — how come I never heard of it until now?!

It’s set before Episode IV, the Empire trying to track down the last surviving Jedi with the help of a powerful artifact… The story really blends in nicely with the Star Wars universe. And where in the world did they get all those costumes??

Maybe some have noted my site wasn’t accessible for quite some time. I’m sorry, obviously I hadn’t noticed I was using to much webspace, so my webhoster turned me down. Well, that is fixed now for the moment. I keep thinking I should change my hosting-company. 300mb is just not enough. Anybody any ideas where I should turn to? Until now I’m with Netbeat.
Well, I gotta get going — still got a lot to study for my exam in october.

This is the slogan of “Despair, Inc.” a company that specializes on demotivation. Funny idea you think, but they take the joke quite far. You can buy demoralizing desktop adornments or calendars. To put an example of a demoralizing slogan: “Ambition: A journey of a thousand miles ends sometimes very, very badly”, featured below the picture of bear catching a salmon. They’ve got lots and lots of those, all worth a laugh. Very funny is also “The book” sold in three different editions. It’s title “The Art of Demotivation”, the editions focus on hierarchy in companies. And each edition is made to keep unwanted eyes from knowing what this is all about. The manager edition features a “cloaking-device”:

“To help protect your investment and potentially your life, our Manager edition ships complete with the Undercover™, a built-in cloaking device. This secondary dust-jacket claims to house a non-existent book called Ethics, Integrity and Sacrifice in the Workplace. This will render the book virtually invisible to your employees, who have no interest in such subjects. “

The “Chairman-Edition” comes in a box with humidiy-indicator, is made from handmade-paper, hand-bound in goat-leather and printed the way Gutenberg invented printing… all of this for a little more than a 1000$… Crazy! I wonder who buys those?