In his excellent article, An introduction to creating documents in LaTeX, author Aaron Cocker introduces the LaTeX typesetting system and explains how to create a LaTeX document using TeXstudio. He also lists a few LaTeX editors that many users find helpful in creating LaTeX documents.

This comment on the article by Greg Pittman caught my attention: "LaTeX seems like an awful lot of typing when you first start...". This is true. LaTeX involves a lot of typing and debugging, if you missed a special character like an exclamation mark, which can discourage many users, especially beginners. In this article, I will introduce you to GNU Emacs and describe how to use it to create LaTeX documents.

Creating your first document

Launch Emacs by typing:

emacs -q --no-splash helloworld.org

The -q flag ensures that no Emacs initializations will load. The --no-splash-screen flag prevents splash screens to ensure that only one window is open, with the file helloworld.org.

emacs_startup.png

^{GNU Emacs with the helloworld.org file opened in a buffer window}

Let's add some LaTeX headers the Emacs way: Go to Org in the menu bar and select Export/Publish.

insert_template_flow.png

^{Inserting a default template}

In the next window, Emacs offers options to either export or insert a template. Insert the template by entering # ([#] Insert template). This will move a cursor to a mini-buffer, where the prompt reads Options category:. At this time you may not know the category names; press Tab to see possible completions. Type "default" and press Enter. The following content will be inserted:

#+TITLE: helloworld

#+DATE: <2018-03-12 Mon>

#+AUTHOR:

#+EMAIL: makerpm@nubia

#+OPTIONS: ':nil *:t -:t ::t <:t H:3 \n:nil ^:t arch:headline

#+OPTIONS: author:t c:nil creator:comment d:(not "LOGBOOK") date:t

#+OPTIONS: e:t email:nil f:t inline:t num:t p:nil pri:nil stat:t

#+OPTIONS: tags:t tasks:t tex:t timestamp:t toc:t todo:t |:t

#+CREATOR: Emacs 25.3.1 (Org mode 8.2.10)

#+DESCRIPTION:

#+EXCLUDE_TAGS: noexport

#+KEYWORDS:

#+LANGUAGE: en

#+SELECT_TAGS: export

Change the title, date, author, and email as you wish. Mine looks like this:

#+TITLE: Hello World! My first LaTeX document

#+DATE: \today

#+AUTHOR: Sachin Patil

#+EMAIL: psachin@redhat.com

We don't want to create a Table of Contents yet, so change the value of toc from t to nil inline, as shown below:

#+OPTIONS: tags:t tasks:t tex:t timestamp:t toc:nil todo:t |:t

Let's add a section and paragraphs. A section starts with an asterisk (*). We'll copy the content of some paragraphs from Aaron's post (from the Lipsum Lorem Ipsum generator):

* Introduction



  \paragraph{}

  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Cras lorem

  nisi, tincidunt tempus sem nec, elementum feugiat ipsum. Nulla in

  diam libero. Nunc tristique ex a nibh egestas sollicitudin.



  \paragraph{}

  Mauris efficitur vitae ex id egestas. Vestibulum ligula felis,

  pulvinar a posuere id, luctus vitae leo. Sed ac imperdiet orci, non

  elementum leo. Nullam molestie congue placerat. Phasellus tempor et

  libero maximus commodo.

helloworld_file.png

^{The helloworld.org file}

With the content in place, we'll export the content as a PDF. Select Export/Publish from the Org menu again, but this time, type l (export to LaTeX), followed by o (as PDF file and open). This not only opens PDF file for you to view, but also saves the file as helloworld.pdf in the same path as helloworld.org.

org_to_pdf.png

^{Exporting helloworld.org to helloworld.pdf}

org_and_pdf_file.png

^{Opening the helloworld.pdf file}

You can also export org to PDF by pressing Alt + x, then typing "org-latex-export-to-pdf". Use Tab to auto-complete.

Emacs also creates the helloworld.tex file to give you control over the content.

org_tex_pdf.png

^{Emacs with LaTeX, org, and PDF files open in three different windows}

You can compile the .tex file to .pdf using the command:

pdflatex helloworld.tex

You can also export the .org file to HTML or as a simple text file. What I like about .org files is they can be pushed to GitHub, where they are rendered just like any other markdown formats.

Creating a LaTeX Beamer presentation

Let's go a step further and create a LaTeX Beamer presentation using the same file with some modifications as shown below:

#+TITLE: LaTeX Beamer presentation

#+DATE: \today

#+AUTHOR: Sachin Patil

#+EMAIL: psachin@redhat.com

#+OPTIONS: ':nil *:t -:t ::t <:t H:3 \n:nil ^:t arch:headline

#+OPTIONS: author:t c:nil creator:comment d:(not "LOGBOOK") date:t

#+OPTIONS: e:t email:nil f:t inline:t num:t p:nil pri:nil stat:t

#+OPTIONS: tags:t tasks:t tex:t timestamp:t toc:nil todo:t |:t

#+CREATOR: Emacs 25.3.1 (Org mode 8.2.10)

#+DESCRIPTION:

#+EXCLUDE_TAGS: noexport

#+KEYWORDS:

#+LANGUAGE: en

#+SELECT_TAGS: export

#+LATEX_CLASS: beamer

#+BEAMER_THEME: Frankfurt

#+BEAMER_INNER_THEME: rounded





* Introduction

*** Programming

    - Python

    - Ruby



*** Paragraph one



    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing

    elit. Cras lorem nisi, tincidunt tempus sem nec, elementum feugiat

    ipsum. Nulla in diam libero. Nunc tristique ex a nibh egestas

    sollicitudin.



*** Paragraph two



    Mauris efficitur vitae ex id egestas. Vestibulum

    ligula felis, pulvinar a posuere id, luctus vitae leo. Sed ac

    imperdiet orci, non elementum leo. Nullam molestie congue

    placerat. Phasellus tempor et libero maximus commodo.



* Thanks

*** Links

    - Link one

    - Link two

We have added three more lines to the header:

#+LATEX_CLASS: beamer

#+BEAMER_THEME: Frankfurt

#+BEAMER_INNER_THEME: rounded

To export to PDF, press Alt + x and type "org-beamer-export-to-pdf".

latex_beamer_presentation.png

^{The Latex Beamer presentation, created using Emacs and Org mode}

I hope you enjoyed creating this LaTeX and Beamer document using Emacs (note that it's faster to use keyboard shortcuts than a mouse). Emacs Org-mode offers much more than I can cover in this post; you can learn more at orgmode.org.