[Blindmath] Useful LaTeX packages: suggestions welcome for ICCHP summer university workshop

Thu Jul 7 22:18:20 UTC 2011

 From what you say, it sounds like gnuplot would be very useful. As a 
quick example of how gnuplot can be included in a LaTeX document with 
gnuplottex see the below LaTeX.
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{gnuplottex}
\begin{document}
Here is a graph of $\sin x$ between $x = 0$ and $x = 2 \pi$.
\begin{gnuplot}
plot [0:2*pi][] sin( x )
\end{gnuplot}
\end{document}

The above LaTeX will need you to give LaTeX the --shell-escape option at 
the command line when compiling if you want the graphs automatically 
produced for you.

Obviously gnuplot has many more features to customise the graph produced 
and also is able to load data from a text file. There are also a number 
of formats it can be output to and can be used independently of LaTeX.

On the topic of the general output of LaTeX, I would hope to cover 
tex4ht somewhere in one of my workshops as that can produce HTML/MathML.

Michael Whapples
On 01/-10/37 20:59, Tim in 't Veld wrote:
> Michael,
> Graphics drawing is the first advanced workshop I'd think of - and I 
> am also wondering if there may be some packages to easily create 
> graphs / charts / trees in your document, never got around to 
> investigating this yet.
> I am also wondering if there is an alternative to the pdflatex output. 
> The pdf files that generates are not accessible, Word does a better 
> job at creating accessible PDF even though lateX should contain more 
> information which would allow accessible PDF / HTML / mathML creation.
> See you at the SU,
> Tim
> On 7/7/2011 1:38 AM, Neil Soiffer wrote:
>> Latex for just math isn't that useful, although with MathJax and with 
>> what
>> I'm going demo when using Word, it does have some use.  Still, using 
>> LaTeX
>> really does mean there is a lot to learn and it is usually easier to 
>> learn
>> it from an expert like yourself rather than figure it out from 
>> manuals or
>> websites.
>>
>>      Neil
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Michael Whapples<mwhapples at aim.com>  
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks Neil, that I have to say is really useful for those at 
>>> university
>>> and such like, however may be a bit far from the Maths so I may 
>>> question how
>>> long to devote to it.
>>>
>>> I think one of the things which could be said about my workshop last 
>>> year
>>> was that it didn't focus heavily on the mathematics side of things.
>>> Unfortunately LaTeX as a document system requires so much other 
>>> stuff to
>>> make it useful for people that it sometimes can make the maths part 
>>> seem a
>>> bit of a side issue. Its probably a balance I am going to have to 
>>> work hard
>>> to get right in these workshops (IE. too much of just the maths 
>>> stuff and
>>> then it isn't really useful, too little of the maths stuff and then its
>>> questioned why I am giving it at something like the summer university).
>>>
>>> Michael Whapples
>>> On 6 Jul 2011, at 20:41, Neil Soiffer wrote:
>>>
>>>> You should probably cover something like bibtex.  It's kind of boring,
>>> but even my 7th grade son is told he needs to cite sources for 
>>> material, so
>>> showing how to do that and build up reference databases is something 
>>> you
>>> can't get started too early on.
>>>>      Neil
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Michael Whapples<mwhapples at aim.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>> I will be giving the LaTeX workshop at the summer university event. 
>>>> While
>>> I have plans for the more basic ones which are to introduce people 
>>> to LaTeX
>>> (either for using it in other software or as the full document 
>>> authoring
>>> system) I have also been asked to do a more advanced one for those 
>>> who know
>>> some LaTeX and may want to know more. My thought is to cover some 
>>> really
>>> useful packages. However the issue is deciding what would be useful for
>>> people who already know some LaTeX?
>>>> So may be those of you who use LaTeX could give me some suggestions on
>>> packages you find really useful or packages you just keep intending 
>>> to learn
>>> but never quite get round to learning.
>>>> Some of my own thoughts include: Covering a package like beamer, 
>>>> however
>>> coverage of this might be brief as it is not really mathematical but 
>>> rather
>>> to demonstrate that those who know LaTeX can produce presentations 
>>> in LaTeX
>>> and get many of the great features they appreciate about LaTeX 
>>> (obviously
>>> including the ability to easily add good looking maths notation). I 
>>> also was
>>> planning to cover some graphics drawing packages, may be something like
>>> pstricks (I might find an alternative which works better with 
>>> pdflatex) and
>>> the gnuplottex package for including gnuplot plots. I would intend 
>>> to devote
>>> more time to packages which are much more relevant like the graphic 
>>> drawing
>>> packages.
>>>> My plan is probably to cover two or may be three packages in total 
>>>> in the
>>> workshop. How many packages I can cover depends on how much detail I go
>>> into.
>>>> Now over to you for your suggestions.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks
>>>>
>>>> Michael Whapples
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