Hey this looks super cool! I don't know LaTeX or TeX, nor am I a programmer, but I do play D&D and would love to be able to make some item cards for my group. Any tips on getting started aside from the obvious of looking up what on earth LaTeX is and how to use it?
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Programming
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LaTeX is a typeset that is written in plain text with Markup language. Word, docs, acrobat are all WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors, so you type the words and use toolbars to edit formatting. In markup, what you write is what you get: you type everything, including the commands for alignment, spacing, etc. It makes control and customization of your document easier. If you ever have tried to use MS Word to make a good looking equation and wanted to die when it messed up your images and spacing 10 pages back, markup typesetting is the solution.
My tip would be to find a few templates on overleaf that you might find useful and just mess around and try to come up with what you want to see. Could be for work documents, could be for a hobby, whatever. Overleaf, the website I shared this project on, is great because it handles the backend stuff like compiling, software installs, etc. and allows you to easily copy templates over from premade projects in the gallery.
I learned to use it for writing scientific publications, but eventually I used it for all my homework, making 'official' looking DnD content, keeping a log of my work; basically most documents that are longer than 1 page. It is particularly good for science and math writing, but is almost as versatile as HTML for whatever you want to make.
Thanks for the tips!
It's a really great system for writing technical documents. I used it a ton in college for my research papers.
I use LaTeX almost every day for typesetting, and I had no idea you could use it for this complex of graphical representation! This is awesome.
It was funky and felt distinctly un-LaTeX with the pdf cropping and graphic declarations, but was super fun. Way different from academic writing or even hobby typesetting with normal, pre-made classes (the DnD 5e LaTeX Template by rpgtex is a gamechanger for homebrewed dnd content and was the catalyst for this). The standalone document class is really weird to work with, and using tcolorboxes as the main document content feels like I am fitting a square peg into a non-euclidean hole, but it is still working!
I am just glad I decided to use LaTeX and not python for this.
How much I do love those fonts. That proper spacing and balancing... It will always a place in my heart and I fear the day that I will fail to recognize it!
They are, and will always be, iconic. I only used one other source when making this, mainly for the font pack and the potential to add a texture map to the text block in lieu of solid gray.