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Comment by bbcbasic | Hacker News Reader

I would like to start using LaTeX actually. I like that LaTex would work will with source control, and that you can use a simple editor like Vim to edit.

I hate using word and have a load of random formatting applied to my document. I am fed up with using the 'format painter'!!!

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Go for it - it's simpler than you'd imagine. You may find this beginner's guide a useful starting point: http://www.andy-roberts.net/writing/latex/

[disclosure: I'm the author]

Thanks for writing these, i found it easy to pick up latex by following them.

Thanks, these look great! I've never used LaTeX but I've heard so much that I think I'll take a look at it now.

One of the things why ms word will always be miles ahead of latex is that it doesn't need a guide to start writing a document.

It works well with source control, but be careful to split long sentences over multiple lines. Most merge tools are a real pain with long lines.

If you haven't tried it already, look into `latexdiff` and `scm-latexdiff` which are awesome for generating diffs.

A good advise is to split sentences between lines at logical places, like commas, dots, etc so the diff will be easy to read.

I like

  git diff --word-diff=color

for diffing LaTeX.

Emacs auto adjusts lines. Command M-q in Tex or Latex mode.

Check "Filling Text" here - https://www.cs.utah.edu/dept/old/texinfo/emacs18/emacs_24.ht...

Right, but autofill doesn't split at logical english meaning. This is what I was trying to say.

The best all-around resource I have come across thus far is https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX

It's certainly a great resource and extremely comprehensive. Personally I think it a bit too detailed to be an effective beginner's guide.

And I say this as one of the credited authors of the LaTeX wikibook (https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Authors)

Therefore I'd still plug my own Getting to Grips with LaTeX as a good starting point for newbies: http://www.andy-roberts.net/writing/latex/

I promise that's my final plug :P Quite frankly I'm just happy people want to learn LaTeX other word processors.

Ha, shameless plug :).

Thank you for the work you put into wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTex.

It's my goto place when I pick up LaTeX every ~5 months and need to remember the basics.

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