How to write electronic solutions

You have already prepared some texts on the computer and probably you have used Word or some similar software. Word is so-called WYSIWYG editor, which means that you edit directly the output, visual file (from English What You See Is What You Get). However, this breaks the Separation of content and presentation principle (if you already have worked on some larger project, you will know what we are talking about).

Typesetting documents using TeX is somehow similar to writing code. You work (write, edit,…) with the source code (in a text editor), which is then compiled (that is what TeX does) into the desired output document, such as PDF. Therefore, to create documents using TeX, you will need an editor, compiler (TeX) and browser (Adobe Reader, internet browser etc.).

What is it good for? Why should I make my work more complicated (compared to Word)? As mentioned above, it separates content and presentation much better (which makes it easier to modify), you can easily use our template, which contains everything you need and considering typesetting of mathematical formulae, TeX is a must.

We honestly add, that since 2007, the equation editor in MS Office is usable as well. It is possible to use TeX to typeset equations in Word as well.

Overleaf is an online IDE for creating and management of documents in LaTeX with integrated LaTeX compiler. A great advantage is that there is no need to install anything and we have prepared a template solution for you, you just need to login, copy the project and you can begin. Another advantage is the availability of cloud drive (which can be used as a remote git repository) and access via a browser, therefore you can write and compile LaTeX documents in any device with a browser.

A small disadvantage may be the fact, that sometimes you may need to create LaTeX source file using a script written other language than TeX, which may not be executable in Overleaf. But that's usually not very often.

1. Log into Overleaf.
2. Open this project.
3. In the menu (upper left corner) select „Copy project“, which creates your copy of the template.
4. When in your project, check that Compiler = XeLaTeX is selected in the menu.
5. You can begin writing. A brief cheat sheet for our macros can be found in the docs directory. For tutorials for LaTeX, check Overleaf tutorials or Stack Overflow.

We have mentioned above how many programmes are necessary to compile TeX documents. You do not need to worry about obtaining and configuring them. For Windows, there is a distribution MiKTeX, which solves it for you.

From MiKTeX web download the desktop installer. We recommend to update all packages after installation using Start » MiKTeX » Update (Admin).

Editor TeXworks is part of the distribution. We run it and write the following document in UTF-8 (we will choose the encoding in the lower right part):

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\title{Hello world!}
\author{Student}
 
\begin{document}
 
\maketitle
\section{Header}
My first page in TeX.
\end{document}

In the compiler profiles (left upper part) we choose pdfLaTeX and run the compilation using the green button. If everything is alright, the first page typeset by TeX appears to the right of the editor. It is a common PDF document open in the integrated browser. Using Ctrl+click you can move between the source code and the relevant place in PDF and vice versa.

The visual appearance and compilation of the document could be changed by loading so-called packages to the compiled document (you have probably noticed the line containing usepackage, that is exactly it).

The packages are saved in files similar to the source file, which you are compiling on your own. TeX search this files firstly in the directory with the compiled source code, secondary in its own directory.

To make typesetting of mathematical formulae faster and cleaner we prepared the package fkssugar and to set document properties we created the documentclass fkssolpub.

It follows that we would have to copy files fkssugar.sty and fkssolpub.cls every time we would want to compile. This is easy, but not elegant nor long-term. Therefore we will save the files somewhere else and force TeX to spread its directory to reach them.

Run Start » MiKTeX » Maintenance (Admin) » Settings and navigate to the 'Roots' bar and add there the path to the directory with the downloaded macros.

• Win-shell
• PSPad (multi-purpose editor, requires to configure „compilers“ to run TeX)
• Notepad++
• LEd
• TeXworks (part of MiKTeX distribution)
• TeXstudio
• TeXmaker
• Visual Studio Code (multi-purpose code editor, has extensions for TeX)
• Vim (legendary expert-friendly text editor, painful to learn, excellent when one knows how to use it)

We chose TeX to typeset maths. Let us mention, how to do it. Short formulae, relations and variables typeset in row mode between dollars.

The numbers on the dice fulfill $0 < n < 7$.

Larger and more complex formulae are typeset in block mode using the 'equation' environment.

The force equals
\begin{equation}
    F = mg \sin(\alpha)\,.
\end{equation}

Arguments of the macros are inside curly braces (braces can be omitted if the argument is one character - but may cause unexpected behaviour or errors…). The most commonly used commands are

• power $2^5 = 32$
• root $\sqrt{1-\sin^2(x)} = |\cos(x)|$
• fraction $\frac{p}{q}$.

Other useful commands are in package fkssugar.

If you do not want to install the whole TeX army, you can use similar syntax in equation editor in OO Writer or MS Word (now can use TeX syntax as well).

a software for compiling source code into PDF of sub-format DVI (must be followed by one more compilation to get the desired PDF)

TeX with extended functionality – macros; one may say that TeX is for typesetting, LaTeX for typography

the same function as TeX, but directly supports Unicode and can use OpenType fonts (e.g. from the system)

extension of XeTeX as in case of TeX

character encoding for almost all existing alphabets, most commonly is saved encoded as UTF-8

• Good practices for writing problem solution (Výfuk correspondence seminar, in czech only)
• LaTeX (wikibook)
• TeX − Stack Exchange (large forum, in english)