Absolutely! I'll add it to the list :D It's actually quite straightforward so if you want to change the page colour, you just need to add `xcolor` to the preamble with: \usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor} Then use the \pagecolor{[color name]} command. It's a switch, so it'll apply from whatever page you call it from until you change it to something else, so you can have different colour pages if you like! This page from the overleaf help guide has a nice example: www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Using_colours_in_LaTeX

Yeah it's a big problem! The best thing to do is to sit them down and show them how Overleaf works, so they can at least collaborate on the same documents as you (without them providing their comments in word and making you convert them all the time!)

Absolutely - I had scripts to automate compiling/building my thesis. My tables were all done automatically in Python and fed directly into my pipeline. All my data production was automated as well - multiple styles, to account for the variety of documents I was writing. I guess if I could be bothered, I could have also produced a UI to go with it and present it all on a dashboard, but astronomers are lazy! The nice thing about LaTeX is that it's very easily customisable. Bibliographies are probably the trickiest part, but it does make it very easy to switch citation styles. Any good journal should provide their own template with all of that already set up, otherwise you have to spend weeks going back and forth with their editors - if there isn't a template on their website (usually under submission guidelines), you can always contact them to ask. If it's all internal stuff for your University, they should also have templates available...somewhere! It's worth it (imo) to find one. Best of luck with your research! :)

I don't think it is possible (or convenient). LaTeX needs to compile the code to generate the output pdf. If you were to autocompile after every word you'd take lots of time and computation

Overleaf has a recompile button that works quickly

TeXstudio as well (plus you don't need to be online), but it's not instantaneous like Word or LibreOffice

Yes, I also use the Overleaf autocompiler. The amount of time it takes to compile depends on how big the file is you're trying to build. I tend to keep all my chapters in separate folders and import them as I'm working on them - in that case, the autocompiler works pretty well, I find! It's not *quite* instantaneous, but it's definitely quick.

If you only want to write math formulas, then Obsidian and plugin "Quick Latex for obsidian" work really well. I use it all the time when doing homework at university when I do not need to have any enumeration, sections, etc. When you type formulas, they are instantaneously rendered so you see both code and output. Obsidian comes with a lot of other useful features.

That's an excellent point and a really good tip, thanks! In overleaf it's not really a problem because it takes the path from the root directory, but on desktop, absolutely. Re: the file extensions, you're quite right that you don't need to specify them. LaTeX picks which is the right one to use according to the compiler and the type of output you're using. So for example, if you're creating a pdf it will pick a vector graphic format over a jpg to make sure the image still looks good even if the page is resized.

Glad it was helpful!

That's a great tip, I wasn't aware of the physics package! Thanks for bringing it to my attention :D

Thank you so much for commenting! I apologise for how slow I've been with the rest of the series, unfortunately RL got in the way a bit (new job, moving house, etc, caused some chaos!). I'm hoping to get back to them soon, since the references video is more than halfway done already. I'm glad they helped, if you do have any specific questions about references I would be happy to try and troubleshoot with you :)

I'm not sure about "easily" - there are some online tools, software plugins, and command line utilities that will help you do it, but often they don't get it right first time so you will probably have a bit of hand-editing to do afterwards. Pandoc is probably the most popular option (johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc), but you'll definitely want to double-check your results after to make sure it's all gone how you expected it to.

You can insert LaTeX syntax into markdown. If you compare the two then LaTeX is a lot more powerful than RMarkdown when it comes to formatting in general. However, you can run equations inside RMarkdown. Although it can be done in LaTeX it is a lot more difficult.

I can definitely look into it! I've not used R Markdown myself, so I'm not very familiar with it at the moment. I am plotting a mini series on documentation, which will use Markdown (probably), so it might be a good idea! I'll see what I can do :)

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you managed to get the job you were looking for! You can probably get around not knowing LaTeX in the short term if you use Sphinx + Markdown (pandoc will allow you to convert md to LaTeX), but if you can invest the time to learn LaTeX it will allow you get a lot more out of Sphinx in the longer term. At least they're not making you use any expensive proprietary software!

Thank you!

Hope it helps :D

I wrote a 140-page dissertation in MS Word. I could not scroll more than ten pages at a time. This drove me nuts. I can scroll through a 1000-page PDF rendered from LaTeX almost instantly. Overleaf can render a 1000-page document for me in under a minute.

Libre office

:D

I like to keep it simple :D I save time on data entry and waste it on making diagrams

I'm really glad it helped :D thank you so much for watching

Thanks for the feedback, that's really helpful for me to know. I'll see what I can do about it, I might have to re-render and upload it again. Since this video, I've been trying a couple of different ways of making the writing more visible because I thought the text was a bit small. I'm now using a combination of capturing only the part of the screen I'm typing in (Overleaf), and using Canva to create the text deliberately so I can more easily highlight the bits I want to. It takes a lot longer to produce videos that way than how I made this first one but I think it's visually clearer. I'd be curious to know if you find it helps or not :)

Not yet! It's the next one in the series, currently in production :)

Those are both excellent suggestions! Long tables (those that go across multiple pages) are annoying to work with, but I can definitely do a video on them :D Actually I had some in my own thesis and one of my papers, so I'm very familiar with how they work. 600 images, all in one giant table. Poor reviewers, lol. With regards to formatting a paper - would I be right to assume you're working with a template provided by a journal? If yes, let me know if there are any specific aspects of the template that are causing you problems. I'm happy to try and troubleshoot, or let you know about specific packages you might be missing or whatever. The video on it might take a little bit longer :D

Thank you so much, I'm really glad it's helping :D

@@soswriting Thank you, I am waiting for your next video <3

I don't tend to use them myself, so I'm actually not sure. I know what you mean though, I like the columns to line up properly, but the only solution I've ever found for that is to manually put in the spaces and tabs myself, which is very tedious and annoying. In the end, I just got used to having wonky tables in the code, as long as the output looks good I learned not to care :D if you do find a tool that does it automatically though, I'd love to hear about it!

Thanks for being amazing and watching it :D

The beauty of LaTeX is that literally everything can be customised. The problem is that there are multiple ways to do most of this customisation lol. But, for changing the name of the table of contents, you can use the command enewcommand{\contentsname}{I want to call my TOC something else}. Renewcommand is a very versatile command that will allow you to apply new rules to the formatting of the whole document. \contentsname tells the compiler to change the name of the table of contents, and in the second squiggly bracket, you put whatever you want to replace "Table of contents" with. If it's because you're writing the document in a language other than English though, you might want to look into the "babel" package which, if I remember right, will automatically translate a lot of the output into whatever language you set (which is more useful if you want to change more than just the TOC display name). I hope this helps! Thanks for watching :D

Thanks a lot! It sure helps :) And, yeah, I'm writing in another language xD

@@rysan3262 This is where you can find the documentation about Babel www.ctan.org/pkg/babel But if you get stuck or run out of time then the first option I mentioned will also work :) good luck!

I'm glad you're enjoying them and thanks for watching! :D Honestly, editing takes forever because I'm a noob, so the memes help my motivation too lol

Thank you for saying so! And thanks for watching :D

:D

What in particular causes you problems with references? I'll make sure I address it :)

@@soswriting Specifically, when the .ris is downloaded I don't know how to integrate it to my project. Thanks!

@@miguelreina2173 Ahh with a third party reference manager? As far as I know it's not straightforward and you have to do a bit of file conversion before you can use it. I don't use reference managers myself so not 100% sure of the exact process, but I'll make sure to find out and include it!

Best of luck in your applications! The library of resumes on Overleaf is definitely very helpful as well, should save you a LOT of time :D

Thank you so much! I'm really glad you liked it :D hope it helps

Haha thank you for saying so! I have a lot of fun making them :D

You're very welcome! And thank you for your feedback, I'm so glad you've found them useful :D

Thank you for saying that! It really does mean a lot to know that they're useful :) the next one is in the final stages of production and on its way soon™

I can definitely feel your frustration, and maths is one of those things where there's literally so many different commands it's almost impossible to know them all. Hopefully I can help make it a bit easier though! With regards to the trig functions, you can treat them as commands to get them to display correctly. So for sinh(x) you can just do \sinh{x} and same for \tan{ax}. This list has a bunch (although not all) the mathematical commands available - hope it helps! The trig functions are at the bottom: oeis.org/wiki/List_of_LaTeX_mathematical_symbols

Hi, I refactorized your code: \begin{equation} \sin h~x = {e^x - e^{-x} \over 2} \end{equation} For two or more equations as a single block use eqnarray environment: \begin{eqnarray} y &=& \tan ax\\ {\delta y \over \delta x} &=& \sec^2 ax \end{eqnarray}

@@atoBeto Thank you. I think I may not have defined my usecase for two or more equations in a single block fully enough. What I'm looking for is a single equation with a reference and the others are just definitions of items in that equation. So in my example the equation I'm interested in is the differential of y vs x but first need to define y in terms of x. I might write it as: \begin{equation} \frac{\delta \tan\;ax}{\delta x} = sec^2\: ax \end{equation} which is readable for a simple equation but if y were more complex, like say: \begin{equation*} y = \frac{e^{iax}}{h * \lambda ^2} \end{equation*} (I have no idea if that exists as an equation, I pulled some random stuff out of thin air) then I might end up with something like: \begin{equation} Q = \frac{\delta \frac{e^{iax}}{h * \lambda ^2}}{\delta x} \end{equation} Which is a mess. Possibly a more realistic example would be where I have an equation that uses a number of constants and I want to define those constants before using them in the equation. For context, I'm currently looking to develop my data analysis skills and as part of that am trying to improve my statistics knowledge. I'm taking the approach that the best way to learn something is to try to teach it to someone else so as I learn things I'm writing them up as if I'm writing a text book. That way I might end up with a better understanding and, if it all works out, can put the resulting text book on Kindle Direct Publishing for like $1 or free and hopefully help some other people. I am curious as to why you use the TeX primitive \over rather than LaTeX \frac? Is it just personal preference or is there a specific reason? Overleaf complains mightily about \over.

@@StephenBoothUK Hi, I use \over only because I think that It is more intuitive :)

Sorry, I missed that part of your original question. Re: multi-line equations, I would recommend using the align environment (so, \begin{align}). Each line is ended with a double backslash, and you set where you want the equations to align using the ampersand (usually right before the equals, so &= is your marker) - basically the same as an array or table. Any lines where you don't want any numbering to appear (e.g. where you're just defining bits of equations to save the final equation looking a mess), put onumber on that line and it will suppress numbering just on that line. If you want to be able to refer to any of the lines by an equation number in the text (i.e., by giving it a label) you can wrap those individual lines in a subequation environment. There are a whole host of ways to achieve the same outcome, but this particular solution has the greatest utility (imo) for different situations. Hope this helps!

Thank you! I hope you'll be tempted to try LaTeX if you haven't already :D

@@soswriting Yes, I started using it last year, when, in my first year of Physics undergrad, I wrote my first lab report with LaTeX on Overleaf. Since then, I just couldn't do without this precious instrument and, just by experimenting, I have learned a lot in just a year. In my last two lab reports i also started playing around with Tikz and the results that LaTeX can carry are just superb! I am very glad that someone like you is making courses, to explain with passion what this underrated medium is capable of!

@@stefanocarini8117 Overleaf has honestly been a revelation, and I recommend it to literally everyone lol. I'm sure people are bored of hearing about it, but I just love it so much. It's made learning LaTeX sooo much easier than it was 10 years ago when I first started with it. Now you can focus on the important parts of learning LaTeX instead of endlessly battling with the compiler - you're proof of that! :D Tikz is very complicated and a lot of LaTeX users are afraid to try it, so kudos to you for making it work, and congratulations on your progress! I wish you all the best for the remainder of your course :D

Thank you very much!

Thank you very much for saying so! As soon as it's quiet enough to record again, normal production will resume! :)

@@soswriting Thank you!)

Hahaha I'm so sorry, but also thank you, because that really made me lol :D I'm glad you're enjoying them anyway, I'm hoping normal service will be resumed soon :)

@@soswriting yey :)