The title of this post is both my subjective opinion and the TL;DR version of this post. If you’re interested in why I no longer bother with any other fonts, let me explain.
Continue reading “Palatino and Source Sans Pro, the only fonts a scientist needs”
Scientists should invest time in a good text editor: pay the upfront cost of learning to use and customising a single editor for all of your text needs. This may be obvious to programmers, but less so to scientists who may have yet to recognise the benefits of a good editor.
Much scientific analysis and documentation can be achieved with plain text files (e.g., .py, .m, .f, .r, .tex, or .md). The default method to work with multiple file types is to use multiple IDEs (Integrated Development Environments): Matlab for m-files, Spyder or IPython notebooks for python scripts, TexStudio or TeXnicCenter for latex files, RStudio for R, or one of the countless editors for Markdown currently available.
Using a single editor has many benefits over using a range of editors within each IDE:
By default, LaTeX produces professional-looking documents. Specifying an extra couple of packages, however, can make your document look even better. Here are four packages I recommend that require no effort, by which I mean you simply add the package to your preamble (and maybe specify a few options) and you’re good to go.
Continue reading “Four effortless LaTeX packages you should use”
LyX is a document processor that provides the power and professional-looking typesetting of LaTeX with the familiarity of an easy-to-use graphical interface à la MS Word. Effectively, it provides the best of both worlds. For someone without knowledge of LaTeX, LyX is less imposing and has a smaller learning curve. But even seasoned LaTeX users who have no desire to leave their favourite text editor can take advantage of some of LyX’s features.
Brushing Up Science 