introduction to latex - latex

what's a good website that has an introduction to latex for window users? I will be using it mainly to write math homework problems and probably then converting it to a PDF to print out. I'm hoping somebody has bookmarked a good link already so I don't have to search. Thanks!

You should start from this "not so short introduction to latex"
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf

I recommend this one: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
LaTeX works the same across platforms (and even across its distros, except some may provide features that others don't), so it doesn't really matter what your platform is.

I find that Andy Roberts's site is perfect for beginners, it has a lot of newbie exercises and takes you by the hand in a perfectly controlled fashion. It is my online reference for my basic latex questions.
http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/latex/index.html

The LaTeX Community site doesn't seem to have any beginner tutorials, but it does have a number of articles that go into specific uses. If one of those articles covers what you're trying to do, then it may give you a headstart.
Outside tutorials, as a beginner getting into LaTeX, I found the TeXnicCenter Open Source IDE to be very useful. It makes life a lot easier when you get some syntax colouring and templates to help with common structures like tables.

Related

F# - Resources for learning it from scratch

I appreciate there are a few posts out there, asking about F# tutorials/learning resources, but so many of the questions (and answers) assume a somewhat established knowledge or experience in C# or programming generally.
While I HAVE engaged in some programming, it's been very bitty and over many years. What I'm looking for is an F# tutorial, or series of tutorials, that walks you through from the very basics (a "complete" program that prints "Hello World!"), and progresses naturally while still showing you the complete solution. Most resources I've found cut out most things and just say "this is how you'd do it in C#, and this is now F#", leaving out other elements that complete the solution to the problem.
EDIT: I found the free course on F Sharp TV (udemy course), but didn't like how it was always exploiting F# Interactive to demo the language, as opposed to building an actually complete application.
I am very new to F#. I just started picking it up this month and I have really enjoyed it so far!
I can really relate to your question because every book or tutorial I've found assumed a lot more knowledge than I had. I would open them up start reading and then 3...2...1...and I was completely lost.
I'm sure once I am better at the language the references that are usually listed will be obviously superior to what I'm about to recommend.
One book I've enjoyed is "Functional Programming Using F#". It starts from the very, very basics and provides information about the small things in F# that I otherwise would have missed. The best part are the exercises at the end of the chapters, because someone went through all of them and posted answers here: [1]. So you can struggle through the exercises and then get an idea of how someone else approached the problem! The main drawback of this book is that the examples can be math heavy at times.
The second book I've used is called "Friendly F#". I really have never seen it linked or talked about, but I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I have found the approach the author takes to be rather novel. Instead of showing me how to implement the Fibonacci sequence in F# for the bajillionth time the author starts with projects! Real projects where you can actually visualize things! For example, in the first chapter you create an F# script where you visualize a ball bouncing in a box acted on by gravity! I know real coders are probably more worried about the esoteric features of the language but as someone starting out it was super motivating to actually be able to visualize something and more importantly to have something to show to my wife so she won't think I'm just wasting hours doing nothing. 😁
The last thing I'll recommend is Excercism. It's a great website where the tutors give great feedback. The only drawback is that you need to have somewhat of an idea of what the language can do. For me, I wasted countless hours trying to solve one of the problems only to realize that there is something called Seq.zip which would have solved the problem instantly. So, I recommend sitting down with a problem thinking hard on it for an hour and then googling "fsharp excercism solutions insert problem name here". Luckily, you can navigate directly to the solutions page and go through hundreds of solutions that other folks came up with. That's how I learned forever what Seq.zip is.
EDIT:
I also wanted to add this video [2]. It's not going to teach you all you need to know about F# in one video. However, it will give you a great overview of the language so while you are learning it in more depth you have an idea of what the language is capable of.
I hope this helps!!
[1] - https://github.com/TorbenRahbekKoch/Functional-Programming-Using-FSharp
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7eNDJN758U
As mentioned in the comments, some might think this answer can be seen as opinion motivated. I feel that those resources could be a good entry point to learning more about the language.
Reference: sachabarbs.wordpress.com/1406-2
Reference en.wikibooks.org/wiki/F_Sharp_Programming
Bonus: Getting started with F# in the cloud with Azure, take a peek at this awesome reference!
Reference: Getting started with F# with Azure Notebooks
I would recommend first fsharpforfunandprofit.com - clearly a big starting point. You have the complete. This is a great section to "thibk functionally". https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/series/thinking-functionally.html
When you get used to the language (a little bit), I would recommend "Stylish F#" . It is a very recent well written book on good practices for beginners (but who can write a bit of F#). Really liked it.

Best intro to dialects and parse?

I'm new to Rebol, and am working with a small corporate-based group to evaluate it for use in some areas that time and again have proven themselves highly resistant to change and to concepts such as DSLs.
Can anyone suggest what they have found to be a good intro to dialecting via "parse"? I have been reading the available docs from the Rebol 3 site, as well as the programmer's guide by Auverlot and Wood, and that may be more than enough -- but if anyone has suggestions for other related material or examples, I'd be appreciative of the advice.
PS: I'm also new to stackoverflow, and so don't yet have the magic 20 points for chat...
Some tutorials on parse:
9.3 Parse (REBOL's Answer to Regular Expressions)
Computer Programming Tutorial, by Nick Antonaccio
a parse tutorial sort of.
Dialecting from same guy:
9.21 Bindology, Dialects, Metaprogramming and Other Advanced Topics
Followed by some examples that show a few examples
If you search on Stack Overflow with the [parse][rebol] tags, you should have quite a few nice and simple examples, with lots of meaty explanations and comments about them.

Creating parsers using flex/bison

Hi I'm need to create a parser to parse search engine advanced query languages:
For instance: “food” language:es
I want to use Flex and Bison but I've never used them. I was wondering if anyone could point me to a good tutorial online, then it would be really helpful. I've been looking online but I didn't find anything useful.
Also, If anyone can provide any sample flex/bison code, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks so much in advance
I'm surprised you have been unable to find good tutorial's online, as the use of flex and bison and similar compiling tools are used in large numbers of computer science university courses world wide. As many people are learning them there are a large number of resources available. You must not have been using the right search terms. There are also numerous helpful tutorial videos on YouTube (including mine).
When I searched, this one came are the first result: http://aquamentus.com/flex_bison.html
The page suggested by #Bart Kiers http://dinosaur.compilertools.net/ is good too.

Tutorial for Pascal/Delphi for C++-Coders

I'm a C++-Programmer. But now i have to learn Pascal/Pascal. Are there any websites, documents around that can teach someone with my knowledge the difference?
It shouldn't be too difficult to pick up. C's design was influenced by ALGOL and Pascal, so the semantics and logical flow are going to be pretty familiar. You can get an overview of the differences between basic Pascal and basic C here.
But you tagged this as Delphi and you mentioned C++, which implies that you'll need information on OOP techniques. Try this article or this one, which compare object-oriented programming in Delphi with C++ and other languages. Both are a bit dated, but most of the basic information in them still applies today.
If you have any specific questions about language features, feel free to ask them here, and welcome to Stack Overflow!
You can check Essential Pascal written by Marco Cantù, is a introduction to the Pascal programming language. you can download a free copy from here.
Another excellent site for beginners, is Delphi Basics, this web site provides help and reference for the fundamentals of the Delphi language. It gives an introduction to the Delphi Object Oriented Language for newcomers.
A website that helped me a lot when I learned Delphi was http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/. I still use it. It presents common methods in a nice way.
You might consider this post on beginner guides to Delphi. It has some good links included that may be rather simplistic for you, but can still take you a long way.
Marco Cantu (mentioned in several answers) also has a book series called "Mastering Delphi." It is a great (maybe only) top to bottom resource. Everything Delphi is in it. But the last edition is for 2005. Four versions of Delphi have been released since. There are a couple of update sheets available from Marco's website (D2006 was mostly a bug fix of 2005). And Marco also has the Handbook series, but that is aimed at people who already know Delphi and are looking for help on the newest improvements.
Personally, Delphi is my favorite language. I hope you enjoy it!
your name sounds german so you might wanne check these pages out
delphipraxis
it's not really a comparison for cpp and delphi/pascal but you'll find a lot of information
due to me being a new user i'm not able to post a second link. but search google for delphi forum..
The Free Pascal documentation is another great resource:
http://www.freepascal.org/docs.var

Is It Time To Rethink The Delphi Help File System?

The majority of components available for Delphi do not have HTML Help files for Delphi 2009. Many components including some very popular commercial components only have HLP and CHM help files.
Many of the third-party components are no longer being actively developed but are used by many developers. As a result there is no IDE help for these components.
There were very few complaints about the old CHM help files but today there are a large number of complaints about the help file system. Maybe it is time for Codegear to rethink the type of help file system used.
One of the complaints that I have about it is even when you install components that provide HTML help files the Contents Tab becomes corrupted where by previously installed component contents are removed.
Are there possible alternatives for Codegear to consider?
I have the same feeling. The old help system helps me more quickly to find an answer.
One idea is to maybe to model it after the Delphi Wiki at: http://delphi.wikia.com/wiki/Delphi_Wiki
The wiki actually isn't set up that bad, especially with the VCL link in the left frame.
It's fairly pleasant to look at, has a decent search, includes issues, examples, cross references, and what I like the most: user comments and tips.
Actually regarding the user comments and tips, the thing I like most about the PHP documentation at www.php.net/docs.php (which I think is the best programming documentation I've seen) is the user comments and tips.
If they can integrate the great layout that you'll find at Delphi Basics into it, and allow 3rd party components to add their help files into it, then they'll have a complete reference. (But the 3rd parties will obviously have to restructure their help files to the new format - whatever it ends up as).
The wiki also has sections for Tutorials, Tips and Tricks, References and Popular Articles. And I think it could also become the all-encompassing code-repository we all would like.
An option to download the help wiki should be allowed so it can be accessed offline.
And they'll have to figure out how to get the F1 key to work to properly search the wiki/help file, whether online or offline, and give the most relevant results.
The trouble with the Wiki now is that it is not complete, and the full set of Delphi help files need to be incorporated into it.
This might be a pipedream, but something like this would be my ideal.
This is a pet hate of mine. The Delphi Help has just got worse, although with a recent slight improvement. I honestly believe that this is one of the things holding back its adoption.
Micosoft introduced Help3 for VS2010, so maybe we will see it in Delphi too:
here is a blog post which answers the question "Why A New Help System?"
http://thirdblogfromthesun.com/2010/10/the-story-of-help-in-visual-studio-2010/
It quotes an internal paper, which led to the new "Help3" project in
early 2008:
"The paper described the following
issues with the help experience in
Visual Studio:
Not being able to find the information you need is a common
problem. F1 Help and Search do not
work as well as they should.
The performance of the help system – primarily start-up, topic-load,
local search results – is one of the
biggest problems.
The offline MSDN library install is fragile due to the complexities of
the help system.
The proprietary nature of our help format offers little incentive for
partners to develop authoring tools
and cannot be easily adopted by
developers in their own products.
On the content production side, the help platform saddles us with
outdated tools and processes.
Finally, and most importantly, no single team at Microsoft owns solving
these problems."

Resources