LaTeX writing

I am keen on TeXniques, though I am not good at them.

Distro

I use TeX Live as my LaTeX distribution. This is a fairly comprehensive one, consequently overwhelming. But I am not yet motivated to change to a smaller one.

Installing TeX Live on Fedora 41 has some subtle issues. It seems that one should prepend

/usr/local/texlive/YYYY/bin/PLATFORM

to PATH, rather than append it. Otherwise a pre-existing binary program pdftex in /usr/bin will be found first. This leads to various errors.

Editor

Currently I am using a combination Vim 9.1 + VimTeX + UltiSnips as my editor. I learnt this from the excellent blogs written by Gilles Castel. Quite regrettably, I will never be able to talk to him in person. Elijan Mastnak has another excellent guide for efficiently writing math in LaTeX.

It is well-known that Vim has a rather slope learning curve. I get acquainted with it after reading a wonderful book by Drew Neils.

UltiSnips is also quite practical. Also I ought to be honest about the following: snippets are not only tools, but rather regarded as toys. That means, they do not necessarily shorten my time spent on TeX-writing (because I also take time to sharpen my snippets occasionally), but they are fun on their own.

Writing style

Through the years, I have “secretly” learnt from many mathematians, the “professional” way of writing LaTeX. Among others,

• Ralf Meyer has had the deepest influence on my writing style — both in TeXniques, and in his principles of good mathematical writings.

• Through my collaboration with Bram Mesland, I have learnt from him many subtle but important suggestions, such as to come up with an effective introduction; and to maintain uniformity in symbols and references.

• As a mathematical physicist, Guo Chuan Thiang is one of the best storytellers I have encountered. This hinges on a deep insight into both mathematics and physics, together with the intellect to make them engaging to the reader.