LaTeX tends to ignore white space. This is good when you’re writing papers but not so good when you’re trying to show code where white space is an essential part (e.g. Python). Luckily there’s a builtin verbatim environment in LaTeX that is equivalent to html’s <pre>. So something like the following should preserve white space.

\begin{verbatim}
for i in range(1, 5):
  print i
else:
  print "The for loop is over"
\end{verbatim}

Unfortunately, you can’t use any normal LaTeX commands inside verbatim (since they’re displayed verbatim). But luckily there a handy package called fancyvrb that fixes this (the color package is also useful for adding colors). For example, if you wanted to highlight “for” in the above code, you can use the Verbatim (note the capital V) environment from fancyvrb:

\newcommand\codeHighlight[1]{\textcolor[rgb]{1,0,0}{\textbf{#1}}}
\begin{Verbatim}[commandchars=\\\{\}]
\codeHighlight{for} i in range(1, 5):
  print i
else:
  print "The for loop is over"
\end{Verbatim}

If you really want to get fancy, the Pygments package in Python will output syntax highlighted latex code with a command like: pygmentize -f latex -O full test.py >py.tex The LaTeX it outputs is a bit hard to read but it’s not too bad (it helped me figure out the fancyvrb package) and it does make nice syntax highlighted output.

Here’s an example LaTeX file with the three examples above and the pdf it generates if you’re curious.

• codeInLatex.tex
• codeInLatex.pdf

So why would you want to give up the convenience of Word for the (initially) more difficult LaTeX. Well one immediate benefit is it looks better. LaTeX does ligatures and kerning. To tell the truth, I never even knew what these were until I switched but they do seem to make documents look better.

The main benefit to me was the easy handling of figures and references. I would often insert a figure into Word only to have to update it with new data or adjusted labels. Somehow reinserting the figure always seemed to mess up its size or spacing or the surrounding text. In LaTex, you can just type \includegraphics{graph.eps} and LaTeX will include the current version of graph.eps each time it is compiled and automatically place it in an aesthetic place. LaTeX also comes with its own bibliography and reference manager, BibTex. This makes references as simple as typing \citep{SmithJohnsonetal1999}. You just need to make a main bibliography file with the details on SmithJohnsonetal1999 and all your other references and BibTex will select the ones referenced in your document and make a bibliography in just about any style.

If you are on Windows, MikTex seems like best solution for implementing TeX. It’s free too. WinEdt (shareware) is a handy editor for LaTeX. It integrates very well with LaTeX and makes the first steps in the switch from Word much easier. Java-based JabRef (free) is handy for managing bibliography data.

Links:

• The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e
• LaTeX Tutorial
• WinEdt and LaTeX