Misc. Stuff

Here are some useful resources designed to help in various technical apsects of research. Although there are many more resources than the ones I list, it is not my intention to link to everything related to a given topic, rather to give a few, very useful ones. Remember: quality, not quantity!!

Latex

Latex has been the de facto document processing system within the scientific community for years and years. There's a good chance within your research life, that you will be required to create a research paper using Latex. But there are good reasons for using Latex other than just because a publisher asks you to. Find out why I think Latex is better than MS Word.

Guides

• Getting to grips with Latex - My very own tutorials taking you from the very basics. Hope to provide my own insights from when I was trying to learn Latex.
• The Not So Short Guide to Latex - This is possibly the best guide available. It spans more that 140 pages, and gives the reader help with the basics of Latex, as well as graduating to the more complex issues, such as graphics, mathmatical notation and customising commands/environments/packages etc.
• Mathematical symbols - This reference document provides commands to get practically every symbol imaginable.
• Latex Navigator - This site is a fairly comprehensive index of useful Latex resources. Particularly good are the graphics and tools sections, that provide links to lots of useful bits and bobs to make life with Latex a little easier.
• Index of Latex Commands - A very useful site that contains documentation of latex commands, order by subject, name and environment.
• UK Tex FAQ - A searchable site covering the most questions that Tex/Latex users want answers to.

Tools

• chktex - Latex is not aways intuitive, especially for beginners. The errors provided when something goes wrong are also pretty cryptic. This was why chktex was developed - designed to check you latex file for syntactic errors and help you fix them easily.
• Lyx - Lyx is GUI front-end to the Latex document processor that can be compiled to run on most platforms. It encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the software. It used Latex to produce its output, but LyX is far more than a front-end to LaTeX, however. No knowledge of LaTeX is necessary to use LyX, although it will give a user more power.
• WinShell - A text editor that is very much geared towards writing latex files. As you can guess from the name, it is win32 only. It is freeware, so you wont get nagged for cash every 5 minutes, however, it is currently not as advanced as some of the shareware alternatives, such as WinEdt or WinTex
• jPicEdit - Trying to produce diagrams via Latex using text-based commands is difficult to do. jPicEdit is a visual front-end for the appropriate drawing macros, which is more intuitive. Once you have finished your diagram, it will export the latex code which can and simply paste into your document.

Bibtex

This is the handy add-on you use to manage your bibliography within a Latex document. Whilst it's possible to embed your references within your current file, it is more convenient to create a .bib file, which is flat-file datebase of your references, that can be linked to any Latex file.

Guides

• BibTeX ing [ps] - This is often referred to as the definitive guide to using BiBteX. It is a fairly thorough manual to the BiBteX file format, although, it lacks any real explanation on how to link your bibliography file to your latex document.
• Natbib Manual - The default style for references in Latex is the numerical system. Natbib is an extension to that and is most useful for allowing the author-year system (like Havard).
• Bibtex tutorial - You may like to check out tutorial 3 from my Getting to Grips with Latex tutorial series.

Tools

• Bibclean & others - Bibclean is a useful tool for checking that your bibtex file is syntatically valid, as well as tidying up your code to make it look nice and pretty!! This page also contains various other useful bibtex tools by the same author.
• btOOL - Rather than create a "one size fits all" tool, the developer of btOOL thought it more beneficial to create an easy to use interface to bibtex files instead. Two libraries in C and PERL exist.
• custom-bib [manual]- Telling latex how you want your bibliography presented is unfortunately not trivial. Which is why custom-bib (or otherwise known as makebst) provides a tex macro that asks you a set of questions as to your preferences, and then performs the tedious task of generating a bibliography style file (.bst) automatically.

Shell Scripting

When it comes to shell scripting, Bash is the way to go, if only for the fact that it is the most documented shell. In our department, we use the C Shell for tradition as far as I can tell, which behaves differently to Bash. If you want your shell changed, look at the instructions in the SoC FAQ.

Guides

• BASH by Example - This guide produced by IBM is a three-part series, covers the basics as well as the important program control using if/then and various loops etc.
• Advanced BASH scripting Guide [pdf] - An extremely comprehensive guide to the ins and outs of BASH scritping, full of examples. The PDF version of this site covers 450+ pages! It is also hosted by the Linux Documentation Project, which is an excellent resource to find good HOWTOs and guides for most linux related topics.

Archives

• Shell Dorado - Despite its cheesy name, this site currently has over 220 scripts for you to view/download and use/modify as you so wish. Scripts are ordered by name or category, which makes it easy to find what you are looking for. There are articles and a good links section to other scripting resources.

Vim

Vi/Vim/Gvim is an excellent and very powerful text editor. Those of you only used to Notepad are in for a shock! Of course, in order to get the most out of this software, you need to learn some of the vast array of commands. But once you know them, you can become very productive.

Guides

• Vim Quick Reference - A one page summary of everyday Vim commands. Created by me, with much help from Hannah Dee, Rene Schneider and Simon Davy.
• vimtutor - This is not a link to any other resource. It's actually something that comes with Vim. Run vimtutor the software will guide you through how to use Vim. This hands-on approach will get you familiar with Vim and only takes around an hour.
• Spell-Checking - A common complaint is that Vim doesn not have a built-in spellchecker. However, it is very simple to add functionality from dedicated spell-checkers directly into your Vim session. Read my little tutorial to find out how.

Writing Style

How do you use a semi-colon properly? Is it 'an honour' or 'a honour'? What is the difference between 'affect' and 'effect'? Written language is complicated, and so below are a small collection of resources that I have found useful. They offer guidance and tips on language usage and writing style.

• Economist Style Guide - The Economist periodical has an international reputation for clarity of reporting on complex topics. This is a online version of their book on writing style, that offers lots of advice on writing clearly and concisely, and highlights common pitfalls for you to avoid.
• George Orwell's Elementary Rules of Writing - These rules were outlined from within his essay Politics and the English Language.
• Ask Oxford - Oxford Dictionaries, and associated reference works, are seen as the authority on the English language. In this online branch, there lies within lots of advice on better writing. There is also a very useful Ask The Experts section that gives answers to frequently asked questions about the language.
• The King's English, H.W Fowler - The online version of a classic work on good writing. Although published in 1908, it is still contains relevant principles that are in fact timeless. As the author remarked: "Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid."
• English Usage FAQ - A comprehensive FAQ (and site) from the people of the alt.usage.english newsgroup. Lots of very interesting and useful things about English. Do you know what a Tom Swiftie is?

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